Granville County students part of world event watching deep space images from Webb telescope
Images from the James Webb Telescope were Tuesday revealed to groups watching on video screens from around world – in India, Israel, Canada and in the town of Oxford, North Carolina.
There, students and others gathered to watch NASA’s latest "reveal" understood that the device is named after former NASA administrator James Webb, the son of J.F. Webb, the namesake for Webb High School in Granville County.
A variety of summer school, elementary students and others found the new images worth cheering about. "The resolution, of course, is something that pops right out at you," said NASA Ambassador and WRAL contributor Tony Rice.
He says the images offer details never seen before.
"We’re able to see through the dust and gas of the nebula of the Carina Nebula that we saw today," Rice pointed out.
Another image called "Stephan’s Quintet" shows the formation of several galaxies.
"I got chills, first of all, just because I was a Star Trek geek of way back," said Valerie Anne Johnson, a dean at Shaw University for arts, sciences and humanities.
The Granville County native couldn’t believe her eyes.
"I was imagining that here I am sitting here witnessing the birth of new galaxies, new stars," she said.
Astronomy club member Caleb Henderson was impressed with the detailed images on the video screen. He described "how amazing it is and how much of an improvement it is from the Hubble Space Telescope."
He added how proud he was of his hometown’s new-found fame.
"It’s very fun to know that someone here from Granville County established one of the greatest things in NASA history so far," said Henderson.
Astronomy club founder Rob Rivers says this event may inspire more local students to pursue STEM careers.
"We’ve been talking about the James Webb Telescope – how it was built – what it means and what we can learn from it – so this was fantastic to see these first images."
On Thursday, NASA Ambassador Tony Rice explained what we are seeing in these amazing photos.
"You bring up the Carina Nebula there, and they picked a fantastic set of first images to put out," Rice said.
Rice compared images from the Hubble Space Telescope to the new Webb telescope.
"They look liked watercolors compared to the absolute crisp details that we're seeing out of what's coming from the Webb telescope," Rice said.
