The new view of the Universe is even better than we could have imagined.
The first official image from the James Webb Space Telescope was released by US President Joe Biden.
It's the furthest back in time we've been able to peer into the Universe, thanks to the huge mirror at the JWST.
The image is beautiful and you can see it. We cannot stop looking at it.
The space agency, as well as the CSA, and theSTScI, are involved.
The best way to look into the distant reaches of space is with the help of the IR. We've never been able to get to the bottom of how the Universe began, but we're expecting to be able to.
Deep field imagery is one of the tools used for this. Hubble looked at a patch of sky for long periods of time to get the most distant light possible.
Webb peered into a patch of sky in the southern constellation of Volans. Some observations of this region have been obtained by the Hubble telescope.
There are massive clusters of galaxies in the foreground, so SMACS-0723 is a good target for this type of observation.
These are like magnifying glasses. Their mass causes the space-time around them to curve with the effect of magnifying light from farther away.
The view of the distant Universe has previously been given spectacularly detailed views by such lens. We can see thousands of galaxies, many for the first time, and the faintest objects we've ever seen in IR in this image of SMACS-0723.
The journey from the project's start in 1996 to today has been a long one with delays and setbacks.
It is satisfying to finally see the first science images from this telescope, and just the first glimpse of the beauty and science to come.
The first image was unveiled in an early announcement on July 11, 2022, and is just the beginning. The rest of the first photos will be released by NASA in a press conference that will be live.
There will be more updates in the near future.
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