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Webb's stunning images of space have captured our imagination,
but they're only part of the story.
About 75% of Webb's observations produce a powerful type of data
called spectra.
Spectra are created by separating light
into its many colors, which can reveal clues
about the light's source.
This is possible because every material, whether it's
iron, oxygen, or something else, interacts
with light in its own way, leaving
a unique pattern of bright or dark lines
across the rainbow of colors in its spectrum.
By analyzing these patterns through a process called
spectroscopy, scientists can use Webb's spectral data
to uncover extraordinary details about objects millions
of light years away, including motion, temperature,
chemical composition, density and pressure, and sometimes
even distance.
While human eyes can see a narrow band of colors called
visible light, Webb's instruments
detect mostly infrared light, which can pass through dust
and reveal objects too cool or too distant to shine
with visible light.
Webb's spectroscopic instruments are so precise,
they can separate light into thousands of distinct colors,
letting scientists detect even very subtle chemical
fingerprints.
With the most sensitive infrared spectrographs in existence,
Webb can see the chemical makeup of galaxies
as they existed billions of years ago
or capture the faint patterns from chemicals
in a planet's atmosphere hundreds of light years away.
With spectroscopy, Webb is revealing details
we've never seen before.
For the first time ever, Webb measured
morning-to-evening changes in cloud cover
on an exoplanet, WASP-39b, a huge step
toward understanding weather patterns on worlds
beyond our solar system.
Webb has also identified the earliest and most
distant galaxies ever discovered,
light that's traveled for more than 13.5 billion years.
By revealing their distance and chemical
makeup via spectroscopy, Webb is helping
us understand how the first galaxies formed
and where the elements that make up everything,
including us, began.
Closer to home, Webb's detailed spectra
led astronomers to map carbon dioxide
on Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, Europa.
The mapping confirmed that the carbon, a key ingredient
for life, likely comes from Europa's vast subsurface ocean.
By analyzing infrared light, Webb
has uncovered some of the earliest
supermassive black holes ever seen and, for the first time,
revealed how massive they are compared to the galaxies
they live in.
By measuring how gas swirls around them,
Webb can essentially weigh these black holes
and show how they and their galaxies
evolve together, which can help us understand the processes that
shaped our own Milky Way.
Alongside its stunning images, Webb spectra
help us see deeper and learn more about the cosmos.
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a spectrum?
That's worth at least a thousand pictures.