And then there were five: NASA releases the rest of Webb’s first images

After months of anticipation, and a day after President Biden himself was involved in the release of an image of the early Universe, NASA has now released four other images from the telescope. We were told by the agency that targets would include a couple of nebulas, a galaxy cluster, and an exoplanet.

It was unclear what features of these objects would be the focus of these images. There are features in the spectrum that can be seen in the visible area. The scientists we spoke to at the launch event suggested that everyone was aware that aesthetic matters and would be experimenting with different methods to do this processing in a way that balanced scientific accuracy with the wow factor.

The results are finally going to be made available, and they did a great job. Details about the scientific content will be added after the press conference is done. We wanted to get you the images as soon as possible, so this story will be continually updated.

A deep look at the early Universe is provided by a gravitational lens. Today, they're telling us that they have a spectrum that identifies elements present in a universe that is over 13 billion years old. It took less than a day for the data to be exposed.

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content/uploads/2022/07/main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-1280-980x1000.jpg" class="center" width="980" height="1000" data_target_width="985" data_target_height="1005" href="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-1280.jpg" credit="NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI"]Image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s first deep field image.[/ars_img]

The spectrum of WASP-96b is going to be next. Water and carbon dioxide are some of the keymolecules that absorb in the IR, and this can be used to register the fingerprints of things that may be habitable. WASP-96b provides a good first target for getting solid data because it is a hot gas giant. The new spectrum picks up a lot of water, but at a lower intensity than expected, which suggests that there are clouds in the atmosphere.

The image of the Southern Ring Nebula was the first big wow. The left image was taken with the NIR cam, while the right image was taken with the MIri instrument. The more energetic regions of the object are shown in red colors. We knew that this was a pair of stars, but now we can see both of them.