First image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals thousands of galaxies in stunning detail

They were joined by Sumeet Kulkarni.

Light left the earliest stars and began a long journey through space after a cloud of gas and dust coalesced to form the sun.

Since then, the light has traveled trillions of miles. Some of the stars were accompanied by planets. A species evolved with the ability to question what is out there, but also to build tools to see what its own eyes can't see.

On Monday, the world got its first glimpse of that ancient light thanks to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

It's a snapshot of deep space, the light from innumerable galaxies swirling around a central point similar to the light thrown off from a disco ball. The image was unveiled at a White House news conference by NASA administrator Bill Nelson.

Nelson said that if you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger, it was the part of the universe that you were seeing.

The Hubble Space Telescope changed the way science views the universe. One of Hubble's most famous images, the eXtreme Deep Field, shows light from some 5,500 galaxies, the faintest of which allows us to look back in time.

Astronomers are able to see Hubble's smallest flecks.

When nature suddenly releases some of its secrets, it's an emotional moment, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. It is not a picture. It is a new way of seeing things. Nature is going to give up secrets that have been there for a long time.

Just a few hundred million years after the big bang, Webb was able to see the distant stars. The human eye can't see the long wavelength of the light in the spectrum.

It was built at a space park in California and launched on Christmas Day. The second LaGrange point is roughly 930,000 miles away from Earth. It's one of five places where the Earth's gravity is in balance with the sun's.

It took a long time for the telescope to reach there. The telescope unfolded itself over two weeks.

The sun shield is about the size of a tennis court. The structure was created when the 18 hexagonal mirrors swung into place. The process wouldn't have looked out of place in the show. The actor who voiced Optimus Prime in the original cartoon was featured in a NASA video.

The gold coating on each mirror enhances it's ability to reflect the light. The mirrors focused on a star called 2MASS J17554042+6551277. A brilliant star that appeared to emit light from six points was shown in the test image.

Behind the star were a lot of light, each representing a different part of the universe.

The telescope's capabilities were glimpsed.

Hubble has provided unprecedented insight into the universe. It has aided scientists in determining the age of the universe and the rate of its expansion.

He is more powerful than the others. The mirror is six times larger than Hubble's, which means it can collect more light and look farther back in time. It has the ability to study the light of theIR.

If Hubble is the location, it wouldn't work. Light and heat from the Earth, moon and sun would overwhelm the newer telescope. Hubble has been repaired by spacewalking astronauts five times since it was launched.

When NASA began talking about the technology that would replace Hubble, it had been in the sky for less than a decade. The telescope was supposed to be launched in 2010 with a $1 billion budget.

The universe was meant to be explored, but the budget and timelines expanded as fast as possible.

The team didn't just have to make sure the telescope would work in space, they also had to make sure it would. The pathbreaking nature of the device made it necessary for them to invent new materials from scratch.

All of the components that make up the telescope had to be imagined and tested before being made.

The budget for NASA's other projects was affected by its soaring costs. The project was killed completely by Congress in 2011. The journal Nature warned in 2010 that the progress of astronomy could be set back by a generation.

The LA Times.

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