Behold, the James Webb Space Telescope’s First Image!

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December of 2011. After many years of delays, retesting, and cost overruns, the next- generation observatory made it to space. After a few weeks of deployment, the arms, sun shield, primary mirror, and secondary mirror were unfurled. The Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point is where the telescope will stay for the entire mission.

For the past six months, Webb has been collecting its first light, which consisted of the deepest field images ever taken, a nearby exoplanet and its atmosphere, and a bunch of other stuff. Most of the images will be released tomorrow. The first images were revealed during a White House press conference by President Joe Biden and others. The event was live-streamed by NASA TV and it was amazing.

VP Harris, the head of the NSC, gave a historical recap after the event began. The deployment of the first observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, had provided new views into the Universe, as well as how international cooperation had made it possible. Biden thanked Administrator Nelson and praised the work of the space agency.

Nelson presented the highest resolution image of the Universe ever taken by a telescope. Nelson explained how the image was a tiny speck of the Universe that had a grain of sand held at arms length. Massive objects in space can cause light to bend and amplify around them.

A section that appears to be warped is one of the amazing parts of the image. Some of the oldest light in the Universe can be seen in this image. He said that Webb would be studying the earliest galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the Bigbang. Nelson said that the images of WASP-96 b, to be released tomorrow, will aid in the search for life beyond our solar system.

He stated that the potential for scientific discovery that he will provide is immense. He said that they would be able to answer questions where they don't know what the questions are. It will answer questions that have been pondered for decades, such as the role played by the elusive Dark Matter and Dark Energy, what the center of our galaxy looks like, and whether or not humanity is alone in the Universe.

Tomorrow, the other first images will be released. There was a conference with NASA officials on July 2nd. According to a NASA statement released shortly thereafter, the experience of seeing these images for the first time was so powerful that Thomas Zarbuchen and others were almost tears of joy.

The event will be live-streamed via NASA TV and shared via a number of social media platforms.

Stay on top of it. Things are about to explode in here. You can watch the recap on NASA TV.

There is further reading on NASA.