See All Of The Webb Telescope’s Jaw-Dropping New Images Including A Giant Nebula And Its First ‘Deep Field’

The James Webb Space Telescope has finally dropped its entire first batch of show-off images—and they’re astounding.

You can see all of them as a complete set on the link above, or farther down this article, but first let’s talk about this image below, now known as the first of many “Webb Deep Field” images.

It’s one of the deepest images of our universe that has ever been taken. It shows a massive foreground galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 magnifying and distorting the light of objects behind it, which is how Webb will study the most distant and intrinsically faint galaxies close to the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. The image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

SMACS 0723 is 4.6 billion light years away. Around it are thousands of galaxies, some of them the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

This image was taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) in 12.5 hours. It takes the Hubble Space Telescope weeks to take deep field images like this, and in much lower resolution and sensitivity.

“It’s the deepest infrared view of the cosmos to date, but what is really exciting is that I know that this is not a record that will stand for very long,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute. “We know that scientists out in the world [using Webb] will very quickly beat our record and go even deeper.”

This first full-color image from Webb was revealed Monday by President Joe Biden. “These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people – especially our children – that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,” he said. That was despite Webb being an international partnership between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Webb’s First Deep Field was possible thanks to something called gravitational lensing. It’s when the gravitational pull from a closer, but aligned galaxy distorts and bends the light from a distant galaxy, causing it to appear misshapen and magnified. Basically it’s nature’s telescope being used by humanity’s most advanced telescope.

“Webb’s First Deep Field is not only the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope, it’s the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe, so far,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“Within minutes [of the image’s release] I was awash with notifications from my colleagues about the noticeable improvement in depth compared to Hubble,” said Dr Nathan Adams, a research associate at the University of Manchester. “With just a simple picture, people are already finding galaxies which previously didn’t show up in the imaging we had of this patch of sky.”

Released Tuesday were also four other incredible show-off images:

The Carina Nebula

One of the jewels of the southern hemisphere’s night sky, the Carina Nebula is 7,600 light-years away and 300 light-years across. It’s one of the largest nebulae in the night sky—and a mind-boggling 500 times larger than the Orion Nebula, which hangs close to the stars of Orion’s Belt.

Like its smaller sibling, the Carina Nebula is a cloud of gas and dust pillars where stars are being born. Also known as the Great Nebula and NGC 3372, it’s in the Carina–Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s home to many massive stars several times larger than the Sun.

Within it is Eta Carinae, a binary star system whose largest Sun had a super-bright “Great Eruption” in 1843. It still fluctuates in brightness—just like Betelgeuse in Orion.

Like that familiar red supergiant star, this hypergiant star could be the next star in the Milky Way to “go supernova” and explode.

The WASP-96b exoplanet spectrum

Proof that Webb can indulge in spectroscopy—the splitting of light into its constituent wavelengths—comes from this data about an exoplanet called WASP-96b, a giant planet 1,150 light years from our solar system that was discovered in 2014. It’s composed mainly of gas. The new data tells astronomers what molecules make up an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

There’s no life on WASP-96b because it’s a gas-ball and it orbits its star every 3.4 days. It’s hot and has about half the mass of Jupiter – it’s a “hot Jupiter,” which are common in the Milky Way.

The Southern Ring Nebula

Also called NGC 3132, this beautiful object is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star. About 2,000 light years distant in the constellation Vela, it’s also sometimes called the “Eight-Burst” nebula.

Stephan’s Quintet galaxy group

About 290 million light-years aways in the constellation Pegasus, this is a group of five galaxies, four of them comprising the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1787. Also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, one of the galaxies called NGC 7320 is about seven times closer to us than the rest.

The other four are a mess, with their distorted shapes, spiral arms and clumps of stars tell-tale signs that they’ve had close encounters with each other.

The purpose of these first color images is to demonstrate to the world that Webb is ready for science.

The images have taken a team of 30 a few weeks working around the clock to put together. “It’s a complex process that includes acquiring the data from the telescope, processing those data to a very high level of quality in a way that it hasn’t been done before and then assembling them into colorful images and other products,” said Pontoppidan. “We’re also very well aware that we’re the first users of the observatory and using it for what it’s built for and we recognize that we’re standing on the shoulders of all the scientists and engineers who’ve worked hard for the past six months to make this possible.”

“This is really only the beginning—we’re only scratching the surface,” said Pontoppidan. “We have in the first images just a few days worth of observations and we have many years of observation so we can only imagine what that will bring.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is now up and running—and this is what it’s going to do in its “Cycle 1” observer programs.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.