Here’s the first full-color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO

The first full-color image taken by the agency's powerful James Webb Space Telescope is a pivotal moment for the deep-space observatory that marks the beginning of its first year of transformational science. The incredibly detailed image, which shows a deep field of some of the most distant galaxies seen from Earth, serves as a preview for even more awe-inspiring images of the universe that are still to come.

The picture is one of a few inaugural full-color images that NASA will release this week to celebrate the start of science operations. The first picture was unveiled by Biden and Nelson at the White House.

Nelson told the President that if he held a grain of sand on the tip of his finger, he would see the part of the Universe that he was seeing. There is just one speck of the universe.

(NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Today's image shows that the JWST promises to change the way we think about astronomy. The largest mirror that has ever been sent into space is used to gather light from some of the stars and galaxies that formed after the Bigbang. Today's image is a great example of what the telescope can do. It shows a region of the sky filled with massive galaxy clusters, which bend space and time around themselves, revealing a deeper look into the universe.

Biden said that when the image is shared with the world it will be a historic moment for science and technology.

JWST’s tumultuous journey

This photo is the culmination of two and a half decades of work by NASA and the astronomy community. The telescope was recommended by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is meant to see deeper into the universe and in more detail than ever before.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The telescope had to be folded in on itself to fit on the rocket and the primary mirror had to be built in 18 hexagonal segments. The project's budget grew to over $10 billion due to years of delays and setbacks. The observatory's name has caused controversy in the past. It is named after a former NASA administrator who was accused of taking part in the Lavender Scare. NASA has no plans to give the observatory a new title despite scientists launching a petition to change the telescope's name.

On Christmas Day last year, the JWST survived its trip into space. It went through a two week unfurling process filled with hundreds of moving parts and single point failures that could have ended the mission had they not worked out. For the last six months an army of engineers and scientists has been carefully aligning the telescope's mirror segments and calibrating its instruments to get the observatory ready to make good on all of its incredible promises at last.

Ahead of the picture's release, Biden said it was a new window into the history of our universe. We are going to see the first light through that window today.

An incredible first image

There is an area of sky with massive galaxy clusters in the foreground of the image. The warped space-time acts like a magnifying glass, allowing us to see even more distant objects behind the clusters. The light from some of the thousands of galaxies in this picture has traveled 13 billion years to reach the telescope's mirror.

Nelson said that the light seen on one of the little specks has traveled 13 billion years.

The area can now be seen in incredible detail thanks to the power and precision of the JWST. The original image has been manually filled in as it is in a dazzling color. The difference between Hubble and JWST is that Hubble observes light in the visible part of the spectrum but not the IR part. The gold coating on the mirror segments helps pick up the light waves. Thanks to our ever-expanding universe, the light from the earliest stars and galaxies stretches as it crosses through deep space. The light stretches into the part of the spectrum that is not visible to the naked eye.

The image is not a single one. The images were gathered over a period of 12 hours. NASA says that some of the deepest images of the Universe have taken weeks to image.

The pic is just a tease. Tomorrow, the rest of the images will be released by NASA. The images should show the breakdown of light in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.

The person is developing.