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See the Universe in a New Way with the Webb Space Telescope's First Images

Are you ready to see unprecedented, detailed views of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made? Scroll down to see the first full-color images and data from Webb. Unfold the universe with us. ✨

Carina Nebula

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars, called the Cosmic Cliffs, is the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb can peer through cosmic dust—thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability. Protostellar jets clearly shoot out from some of these young stars in this new image.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula: it’s an expanding cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. In this new image, the nebula’s second, dimmer star is brought into full view, as well as the gas and dust it’s throwing out around it. (The brighter star is in its own stage of stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.) These kinds of details will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Finally, you might notice points of light in the background. Those aren’t stars—they’re distant galaxies.

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies near each other, was discovered in 1877 and is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This new image brings the galaxy group from the silver screen to your screen in an enormous mosaic that is Webb’s largest image to date. The mosaic covers about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter; it contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. Never-before-seen details are on display: sparkling clusters of millions of young stars, fresh star births, sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars, and huge shock waves paint a dramatic picture of galactic interactions.

WASP-96 b

WASP-96 b is a giant, mostly gas planet outside our solar system, discovered in 2014. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved across the star. The light curve confirmed previous observations, but the transmission spectrum revealed new properties of the planet: an unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds in the atmosphere. This discovery marks a giant leap forward in the quest to find potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

Webb's First Deep Field

This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, looks 4.6 billion years into the past. Looking at infrared wavelengths beyond Hubble’s deepest fields, Webb’s sharp near-infrared view reveals thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—in the most detailed view of the early universe to date. We can now see tiny, faint structures we’ve never seen before, like star clusters and diffuse features and soon, we’ll begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

These images and data are just the beginning of what the observatory will find. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space—and for milestones like this!

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Finalized Lunar images from last night. #celestron127slt #celestrontelescope #backyardastronomy #moon #solarsystemambassador https://www.instagram.com/p/CZxsfAEs74A/?utm_medium=tumblr

Did you know: NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 is the first NASA Commercial Crew Program mission to fly two international partner astronauts? Both Thomas Pesquet of ESA - European Space Agency and Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) will be aboard the Crew Dragon launching April 22 to the International Space Station. #nasa #crewdragon #iss #solarsystemambassador https://www.instagram.com/p/CNmFBvmj2Qk/?igshid=1vvs39ahvj71a

Did some work on this little guy this evening:

http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?ra=213.34784249&dec=0.57352944

IMAGE CREDIT: http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/credits/

Fun night outside! Took advantage of some tips I’ve read and watched, and captured some decent Moon images. Still have some focusing issues, but these turned out pretty good for what I was using. #celestron127slt #iphone11 #moon #astronomy #backyardastronomy https://www.instagram.com/p/CO9SFAMjd3A/?igshid=163w76p92jsl7

Playing with blue filter on my Celestron 127slt mak. To windy for tracking, so this is a single image. #backyardastronomy #moon #celestron127slt #telescope #space #atlanta #apollo11 #iphone https://www.instagram.com/p/B2DiQnqnUiX/?igshid=w0r1bcpxky8q

I waited 44 years to be this close to an Orbiter. Nice to meet you, Atlantis. You look amazing! #spaceshuttleatlantis #spaceshuttle #ksc #kennedyspacecenter #nasa #solarsystemambassador https://www.instagram.com/p/CP_DCSCDQtg/?utm_medium=tumblr

Looking forward to the launch of Mars Rover, Perseverance! #nasa #nasasocial @nasajpl @nasa #mars #perseverance #space #planets https://www.instagram.com/p/CC_PU75HnCu/?igshid=1e9tvyopix5kz

This is probably one of the coolest images I’ve ever processed! This is Jupiter’s moon, Europa. As the Juno spacecraft orbits Jupiter, it can sometimes point its camera away from the planet itself. Here’s the catch, Jupiter is millions of miles from Earth and it takes power to transmit data. Therefore, Juno transmits barebones images and data. It’s up to us here on Earth to use computers to piece the data together and process the images. #nasa #juno #jupiter #space #solarsystemambassador #europa https://www.instagram.com/p/CdUh1l-OTAH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Moon rock retrieved by Alan Bean on Apollo 12 #nasa #apollo #moon #huntsvillealabama #usspaceandrocketcenter (at U.S. Space & Rocket Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw0klJcHh-V/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=wffxjvgphmc4