Our view of the universe expanded on Monday, and then Tuesday the view was expanded in eye-popping detail. The first images from NASA’s new space telescope are brimming with galaxies and offers the deepest look of the cosmos ever captured.
The first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope was unveiled by the White House. That image was followed Tuesday by the release of more galactic beauty shots from the telescope’s initial outward gazes.
One of the images combined the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope’s two cameras to create a never-before-seen view of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.
Watch the replay from NASA on Tuesday:
The NASA reveal was live on NASA TV, carried by many cable and streaming services, as well as the NASA website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, and Daily Motion.
The world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America. It reached its lookout point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in January. Then the lengthy process began to align the mirrors, get the infrared detectors cold enough to operate and calibrate the science instruments, all protected by a sunshade the size of a tennis court that keeps the telescope cool.
The plan is to use the telescope to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the early days of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus.
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