The James Webb Telescope Images Explained

Live Science

The most powerful telescope in history.  The James Webb Space Telescope's "jewel-filled" photos are stunning.

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00:00From the birthing places of baby stars, to a dying star's dramatic death rose,

00:05from an image of five galaxies locked in an endless cosmic ballet,

00:09to a view of the cosmos that's so deep, it takes us back to the very beginnings of galaxies themselves.

00:16The James Webb Space Telescope's first ever images are here, and they're absolutely mind-melting.

00:22The five new full-colour photos, released by NASA this week as test images of the brand-new James Webb Space Telescope,

00:34show our universe in unprecedented, breathtaking detail.

00:39NASA has said they're only the beginning.

00:42The $10 billion telescope, designed as a replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope,

00:48is a hundred times more powerful than its predecessor,

00:51and able to take highly detailed snapshots of our universe in a matter of days.

00:56The telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day, and spent six months calibrating its instruments,

01:03and unfurling its 21-foot-wide, gold-plated primary mirror.

01:08Since coming online, the James Webb has been taking all kinds of test images

01:13in preparation for its planned two decades of service studying our cosmos.

01:19NASA has released five of those test images this week,

01:22all specially chosen to show how the telescope can help astronomers discover more about our cosmos.

01:30First on the list is Stéphane's Quintet,

01:33a group of five tightly-bound galaxies located 290 million light-years away.

01:40Four of these galaxies are constantly circling around each other,

01:44locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.

01:49Scientists hope that by studying this dancing quintet,

01:52they could gain some insights into dark matter,

01:56the mysterious substance believed to make up most of the universe's matter.

02:01Next is this image of the Carina Nebula,

02:05a dust and gas cloud 7,600 light-years from Earth,

02:10and one of the brightest and most active star-forming regions ever discovered.

02:15It is home to many stars much larger than our Sun,

02:19making it an attractive place to look for clues into the beginnings of our solar system,

02:23as well as its dramatic finale.

02:27On the subject of dying stars, the third image in NASA's teaser is the Southern Ring Nebula,

02:33also known as the Ape Burst for its figure-eight appearance.

02:37Positioned around 2,000 light-years from Earth,

02:40the nebula is an expanding cloud of gas and dust,

02:43spewed out by the death throes of a red dwarf star.

02:47As the nebula's dust particles are particularly rich in heavy elements such as carbon,

02:52these remnants could one day go on to form new stars and planets,

02:57giving us a fascinating peek into the cosmic cycle of death and rebirth.

03:03The fourth snapshot wasn't so much an image,

03:06but the first full colour spectrum of WASP-96b,

03:10a giant, mostly gaseous exoplanet that's half the mass of Jupiter

03:15and is located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth.

03:20First discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is so close to its Sun

03:24that a single orbit takes just 3.4 Earth days.

03:28By studying the way light is absorbed and re-emitted by this planet's atmosphere,

03:32the web was able to detect water vapour.

03:35If scientists can spot molecules like methane or carbon dioxide on other planets,

03:40they could use it as a way to hunt for life beyond our solar system.

03:45And we've saved the best till last.

03:48This image, called the web's first deep field,

03:51shows a cluster of galaxies with a combined gravity that is so strong

03:55they act as a gigantic magnifying lens,

03:58warping and concentrating distant starlight in an effect called gravitational lensing.

04:03This doesn't just enable us to see deeper into the universe,

04:06but, because light travels at a fixed speed,

04:09allows us to detect older light emitted further back in the universe's past,

04:14an optical time machine through which we can glimpse the faintest glimmerings of starlight

04:18from the first ever galaxies.

04:21Now, if none of this has melted your brain so far,

04:24every light source in this image that doesn't have the characteristic diffraction spikes of a star

04:29is a galaxy, and each galaxy here contains billions of stars and trillions of worlds.

04:35All of this is contained within an image that is just the tiniest slice of sky,

04:39the equivalent of holding a sand grain up at arm's length.

04:43And for all the unprecedented and staggering depth in this image,

04:47it took the James Webb just 12 and a half hours to capture it.

04:51And these images are just the beginning.

04:53Now that the telescope is in operation,

04:55scientists from all over the world will be using it to explore space

04:58like it has never been explored before.

05:01We don't know yet what the James Webb Space Telescope will teach us,

05:04but one thing we do know for certain is that our understanding of our universe

05:08is about to be changed forever.

05:17NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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