First Images Of Universe From James Webb Space Telescope Released, Highest Resolution Image Ever

President Joe Biden released the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope of its kind which was launched into orbit last December. NASA has been sharing new images from the telescope’s infrared cameras this week beginning with the Monday drop.

The image Biden released on Monday has the distinction of being the highest-resolution image of the known universe. The lights in the image are not just stars, but galaxies of millions of stars. A galaxy cluster that’s central in the image is so large that it warps the passing light of other galaxies that are behind it, causing the strange distortions of some shapes noticeable in the image.

Despite how awe-inspiring and massive this image seems, NASA noted in their image description that the view “covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.”

The JWST is continuing on the mission of the Hubble space telescope, which was first launched in 1990 with the objective to map and photograph deep space.

NASA wasn’t done with just that one photo either. More images released Tuesday showed off new capabilities of the Webb telescope, including its ability to see through cosmic dust that obscured areas in the past, and more advance capturing technology that will help it record the formation of stars far more easily.

The Tuesday images included a “stellar nursery” located in the Carina Nebula that had previously gone undetected and gave the look of gorgeous “Cosmic Cliffs” as gases in space appeared to form peaks and valleys. They also released an image of a nebula created by two stars late in their lives.