📷 Key players Meteor shower up next 📷 Leaders at the dais 20 years till the next one
NATION
NASA

NASA releases 'sharpest' images of the universe from James Webb Space Telescope

Camille Fine
USA TODAY

Tuesday, NASA released "the deepest and sharpest" images of the distant universe from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The size of a tennis court and three stories high, the Webb is the largest telescope sent into space, according to NASA. 

The first full-color image released Monday marked the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. Using infrared wavelengths, the Webb telescope shows thousands of stars and galaxies that formed about 13 billion years ago, about 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured an image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723.

First image from the James Webb Space Telescope released:It shows thousands of galaxies

Stephan’s Quintet is a grouping of five galaxies.
NASA’s Webb telescope observed the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, left, and mid-infrared light. Details from the late stages of a star’s life help astronomers understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Most of the multicolored points of light in the background are galaxies, not stars.

In one image of the Southern Ring planetary nebula, the shells of gas and dust ejected from dying stars like our sun, provide detail from the late stages of a star’s life.

Most of the multicolored points of light seen here are galaxies.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, this region is the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity roughly 7,600 light-years away. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is hot, ionized gas and dust streaming away from the nebula because of intense, ultraviolet radiation.
Technicians use a crane to lift the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on April 13, 2017. The telescope is designed to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the dawn of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus.

Webb chronicled the Cosmic Cliffs, a region roughly 7,600 light-years away. This period of very early star formation is rare and difficult to capture, according to NASA. 

Contributing: Doyle Rice 

Featured Weekly Ad