Theme: Light and Distance
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Text, Viewspace. The show will continue in 15 seconds. Coming up: Use telescopes to observe the distant universe.
The timer at top right counts down from 15 seconds.
(SPEECH)
[COSMIC MUSIC]
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The text appears on a background of stars which move slowly towards and past us.
(SPEECH)
[DOWNBEAT MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Animation of the Sun, a woman holding a cell phone, a dog, a fountain, camp fire, picnic
Objects emit all kinds of radiation
The electromagnetic spectrum: The different types of radiation make up the electromagnetic spectrum. Gamma ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave, radio
When we look at the world around us, we see the only type of radiation human eyes evolved to detect: visible light.
Sun shines through the clouds over a lush, green landscape
Other animals are different.
Certain types of snakes and beetles, for instance, can see infrared light.
A snake seeing meerkats using infrared
Birds can see into the ultraviolet range.
birds fly
Scientist in front of telescope mirrors
Humans must use technology to see other forms of radiation
insets showing galaxies as seen in infrared and ultraviolet light
A colorful spiral galaxy
The Webb Space Telescope will let us see infrared radiation as clearly as the Hubble Space Telescope sees visible light.
Webb Telescope on the left, Hubble on the right. The Webb photo is brightly colored blue, pink, white; the hues in Hubble's photo are muted, beige, white, brown
(SPEECH)
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Stars glow in a dark sky. Text, Visible and infrared image of Hubble Ultra Deep Field. This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view that stretches over 13 billion light-years into the cosmos.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a snapshot of what we see when we look into the sky today.
Yet at the same time, it captures the universe of the far-distant past.
Everything you see in this image is ancient history, witnessed not as it is now, but as it was long ago.
(SPEECH)
[NEW-AGE MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
The earliest galaxies in this image appear as they were just a short time after the big bang.
The idea seems incredible, like having a time machine at your fingertips.
But the reality is much simpler.
Light moves
White lines streak left to right
Text, It travels at amazing speeds, but it still takes time to cross the immense distances of space.
The Moon is Earth's closest cosmic companion, about 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers) away.
A wavy line moves from the Moon on the right to the Earth on the left. Text, Light takes 1.3 seconds to travel that distance.
So when the light from the Moon strikes your eyes, you're seeing it as it was 1.3 seconds earlier.
A wavy line moves from the Sun on the right to the Earth on the left. Text, the Sun is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away, far enough for light to take more than eight minutes to travel to Earth.
Solar prominences on the sun. Text, The sunlight reaching us right now is more than eight minutes old.
Orbital rings in different colors. Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth. Text, The farther away objects are, the longer their light takes to reach us.
A wavy line moves from Neptune to Earth. Text, Light from Neptune takes four hours to reach the inner solar system ...
... while the light from the next-nearest star system travels for four years before it reaches Earth.
A bright orb moves among the stars
A giant light at an angle. Text, Galaxies are even farther away.
The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest large galactic neighbor.
Light must travel 2.5 million years to reach us from Andromeda.
The distance that light travels in a year is such a useful measurement for talking about immense Cosmic distances that we have a name for it - a light-year
Galaxies inside four rectangular shapes. Distant Galaxies at far left, Nearby Galaxies far right. A telescope to the right. A wavy line moves left to right. Text, When we use our telescopes to collect light from the galaxies most distant from us, we are capturing light that left them billions of years earlier.
We see them not as they were seconds or minutes ago, but as they were billions of years ago, when they were newly formed.
18 stars and galaxies in a grid. Text, The light from the universe's first stars and galaxies is still out there, traveling the vast expanses of space.
A moving three-dimensional web strung between bright points in space, Text, If we could capture that light, we could see those objects as they appeared when they first formed.
But we haven't been able to see it, not even with Hubble's powerful vision.
On a grid, a wavy line moves from a galaxy to Earth, shifting towards red as it moves. Text, That's because, as the light travels across space, it's stretched by the expansion of the universe.
The Expanding Universe Stretches Light.
An arrow from Ultraviolet and Visible Light over a galaxy points to Infrared Light over Earth. A wavy, multi-colored line between them.
Text, This changes the light from ultraviolet and visible wavelengths into infrared light.
Hubble can see only some of those infrared wavelengths.
The James Webb Space Telescope. Text, With its huge mirror and infrared-sensitive instruments, the James Webb Space Telescope can observe this infrared light and study the universe’s earliest galaxies.
The Webb and Hubble side by side. Text, Webb’s infrared images have the same resolution and detail of the visible-light images taken by Hubble.
Webb opens a window onto regions of the universe humanity has never seen before.
(SPEECH)
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Top left, a black and white picture of a minotaur. Top right, a color picture of galaxies.
Text, MYTH versus REALITY
Myth side
Text, When we look at stars in the night sky, we are seeing them in real time.
Reality side
Text, All of the stars we can see with the naked eye are in our Milky Way galaxy. Although they are close compared to stars in other galaxies, they are still very far away. It can take several years to thousands of years for light from these stars to reach us. If a star were to explode today, it would be a long time before we saw the event in our sky.
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An image of spiral galaxy N G C 13 09, a swirl of pale white and yellow clouds spinning around a central bright glowing orange point. The clouds are filled with stars and surrounded by the star-filled blackness of space. Text, This is spiral galaxy N G C 13 09, 100 million light years away from Earth. Look past it and you’ll see a multitude of even more distant galaxies. Zooming out, the space behind the galaxy contains smaller spirals and spheres in the distance.
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[TRANQUIL SPACE MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
The light from NGC 13 09 traveled 100 million years to reach Earth. The light from the galaxies behind N G C 13 09 traveled even longer, some of it for billions of years.
(SPEECH)
(SPEECH)
[DOWNBEAT MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Animation of the Sun, a woman holding a cell phone, a dog, a fountain, camp fire, picnic
Objects emit all kinds of radiation
The electromagnetic spectrum: The different types of radiation make up the electromagnetic spectrum. Gamma ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave, radio
When we look at the world around us, we see the only type of radiation human eyes evolved to detect: visible light.
Sun shines through the clouds over a lush, green landscape
Other animals are different.
Certain types of snakes and beetles, for instance, can see infrared light.
A snake seeing meerkats using infrared
Birds can see into the ultraviolet range.
birds fly
Scientist in front of telescope mirrors
Humans must use technology to see other forms of radiation
insets showing galaxies as seen in infrared and ultraviolet light
A colorful spiral galaxy
The Webb Space Telescope will let us see infrared radiation as clearly as the Hubble Space Telescope sees visible light.
Webb Telescope on the left, Hubble on the right. The Webb photo is brightly colored blue, pink, white; the hues in Hubble's photo are muted, beige, white, brown
(SPEECH)
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Stars glow in a dark sky. Text, Visible and infrared image of Hubble Ultra Deep Field. This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view that stretches over 13 billion light-years into the cosmos.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a snapshot of what we see when we look into the sky today.
Yet at the same time, it captures the universe of the far-distant past.
Everything you see in this image is ancient history, witnessed not as it is now, but as it was long ago.
(SPEECH)
[NEW-AGE MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
The earliest galaxies in this image appear as they were just a short time after the big bang.
The idea seems incredible, like having a time machine at your fingertips.
But the reality is much simpler.
Light moves
White lines streak left to right
Text, It travels at amazing speeds, but it still takes time to cross the immense distances of space.
The Moon is Earth's closest cosmic companion, about 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometers) away.
A wavy line moves from the Moon on the right to the Earth on the left. Text, Light takes 1.3 seconds to travel that distance.
So when the light from the Moon strikes your eyes, you're seeing it as it was 1.3 seconds earlier.
A wavy line moves from the Sun on the right to the Earth on the left. Text, the Sun is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away, far enough for light to take more than eight minutes to travel to Earth.
Solar prominences on the sun. Text, The sunlight reaching us right now is more than eight minutes old.
Orbital rings in different colors. Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth. Text, The farther away objects are, the longer their light takes to reach us.
A wavy line moves from Neptune to Earth. Text, Light from Neptune takes four hours to reach the inner solar system ...
... while the light from the next-nearest star system travels for four years before it reaches Earth.
A bright orb moves among the stars
A giant light at an angle. Text, Galaxies are even farther away.
The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest large galactic neighbor.
Light must travel 2.5 million years to reach us from Andromeda.
The distance that light travels in a year is such a useful measurement for talking about immense Cosmic distances that we have a name for it - a light-year
Galaxies inside four rectangular shapes. Distant Galaxies at far left, Nearby Galaxies far right. A telescope to the right. A wavy line moves left to right. Text, When we use our telescopes to collect light from the galaxies most distant from us, we are capturing light that left them billions of years earlier.
We see them not as they were seconds or minutes ago, but as they were billions of years ago, when they were newly formed.
18 stars and galaxies in a grid. Text, The light from the universe's first stars and galaxies is still out there, traveling the vast expanses of space.
A moving three-dimensional web strung between bright points in space, Text, If we could capture that light, we could see those objects as they appeared when they first formed.
But we haven't been able to see it, not even with Hubble's powerful vision.
On a grid, a wavy line moves from a galaxy to Earth, shifting towards red as it moves. Text, That's because, as the light travels across space, it's stretched by the expansion of the universe.
The Expanding Universe Stretches Light.
An arrow from Ultraviolet and Visible Light over a galaxy points to Infrared Light over Earth. A wavy, multi-colored line between them.
Text, This changes the light from ultraviolet and visible wavelengths into infrared light.
Hubble can see only some of those infrared wavelengths.
The James Webb Space Telescope. Text, With its huge mirror and infrared-sensitive instruments, the James Webb Space Telescope can observe this infrared light and study the universe’s earliest galaxies.
The Webb and Hubble side by side. Text, Webb’s infrared images have the same resolution and detail of the visible-light images taken by Hubble.
Webb opens a window onto regions of the universe humanity has never seen before.
(SPEECH)
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Top left, a black and white picture of a minotaur. Top right, a color picture of galaxies.
Text, MYTH versus REALITY
Myth side
Text, When we look at stars in the night sky, we are seeing them in real time.
Reality side
Text, All of the stars we can see with the naked eye are in our Milky Way galaxy. Although they are close compared to stars in other galaxies, they are still very far away. It can take several years to thousands of years for light from these stars to reach us. If a star were to explode today, it would be a long time before we saw the event in our sky.
(DESCRIPTION)
An image of spiral galaxy N G C 13 09, a swirl of pale white and yellow clouds spinning around a central bright glowing orange point. The clouds are filled with stars and surrounded by the star-filled blackness of space. Text, This is spiral galaxy N G C 13 09, 100 million light years away from Earth. Look past it and you’ll see a multitude of even more distant galaxies. Zooming out, the space behind the galaxy contains smaller spirals and spheres in the distance.
(SPEECH)
[TRANQUIL SPACE MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
The light from NGC 13 09 traveled 100 million years to reach Earth. The light from the galaxies behind N G C 13 09 traveled even longer, some of it for billions of years.
(SPEECH)
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Top left, a black and white picture of a minotaur. Top right, a color picture of galaxies.
Top left, a black and white picture of a minotaur. Top right, a color picture of galaxies.
Text, MYTH versus REALITY
Myth side
Text, We can't watch galaxies change, so we can't understand how they evolve over time.
Reality side
Text, Most galaxy changes are too slow for us to observe in real time. But because the light from other galaxies must travel great distances to reach us, we can observe multiple galaxies at different stages of development, depending on how far away they reside. Observing many different galaxies at different stages allows us to infer how a single galaxy can change over time.
(SPEECH)
[PEACEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
Text, at a glance, The first galaxies
View of elliptical and spiral galaxies
Text, Galaxies change in size and appearance over time
Today’s galaxies often have large spiral or elliptical shapes.
Earlier galaxies have less definition
Galaxies shown in a broad view of space are circled and placed in a grid. Each square contains an example of a small round galaxy
Text, And extremely early galaxies often appear as smallish blobs of stars.
The Webb Telescope is helping us understand how the earliest galaxies evolved into the galaxies we see today.
(SPEECH)
[DOWNBEAT MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Red, pink, orange, and white galaxies.
Text, Hubble Ultra Deep Field in Infrared. The Hubble Deep Field contains a myriad of beautiful galaxies.
Three small red galaxies are circled in green.
Text, But when astronomers are looking for the most distant galaxies in the universe, they peer past these spirals and ellipticals to search for the tiny, glowing red dots that are the earliest galaxies we can see with Hubble.
The James Webb Space Telescope can see even younger galaxies, in more detail, deeper in the cosmos.
(SPEECH)
[PEACEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
(DESCRIPTION)
Text, at a glance, The first galaxies
View of elliptical and spiral galaxies
Text, Galaxies change in size and appearance over time
Today’s galaxies often have large spiral or elliptical shapes.
Earlier galaxies have less definition
Galaxies shown in a broad view of space are circled and placed in a grid. Each square contains an example of a small round galaxy
Text, And extremely early galaxies often appear as smallish blobs of stars.
The Webb Telescope is helping us understand how the earliest galaxies evolved into the galaxies we see today.
(SPEECH)
[DOWNBEAT MUSIC]
(DESCRIPTION)
Red, pink, orange, and white galaxies.
Text, Hubble Ultra Deep Field in Infrared. The Hubble Deep Field contains a myriad of beautiful galaxies.
Three small red galaxies are circled in green.
Text, But when astronomers are looking for the most distant galaxies in the universe, they peer past these spirals and ellipticals to search for the tiny, glowing red dots that are the earliest galaxies we can see with Hubble.
The James Webb Space Telescope can see even younger galaxies, in more detail, deeper in the cosmos.