00:00From the birthing places of baby stars, to a dying star's dramatic death rose, from
00:05an image of five galaxies locked in an endless cosmic ballet, to a view of the cosmos that's
00:11so deep it takes us back to the very beginnings of galaxies themselves.
00:15The James Webb Space Telescope's first ever images are here, and they're absolutely mind-melting.
00:26The five new full-colour photos, released by NASA this week as test images of the brand
00:32new James Webb Space Telescope, show our universe in unprecedented, breathtaking detail.
00:38NASA has said they're only the beginning.
00:42The $10 billion telescope, designed as a replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope, is 100 times
00:48more powerful than its predecessor, and able to take highly detailed snapshots of our universe
00:53in a matter of days.
00:55The telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day, and spent six months calibrating its instruments
01:02and unfurling its 21-foot-wide gold-plated primary mirror.
01:08Since coming online, the James Webb has been taking all kinds of test images in preparation
01:13for its planned two decades of service studying our cosmos.
01:19NASA has released five of those test images this week, all specially chosen to show how
01:24the telescope can help astronomers discover more about our cosmos.
01:30First on the list is Stefan's Quintet, a group of five tightly-bound galaxies located
01:37290 million light-years away.
01:40Four of these galaxies are constantly circling around each other, locked in a cosmic dance
01:46of repeated close encounters.
01:49Scientists hope that by studying this dancing quintet, they could gain some insights into
01:54dark matter, the mysterious substance believed to make up most of the universe's matter.
02:01Next is this image of the Carina Nebula, a dust and gas cloud 7600 light-years from Earth,
02:09and one of the brightest and most active star-forming regions ever discovered.
02:15It is home to many stars much larger than our sun, making it an attractive place to look
02:21for clues into the beginnings of our solar system, as 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 8 Burst, for its figure 8 appearance.
02:37Positioned around 2,000 light-years from Earth, the Nebula is an expanding cloud of gas and dust,
02:43spewed out by the death throes of a red dwarf star.
02:46As the nebula's dust particles are particularly rich in heavy elements such as carbon, these
02:53remnants could one day go on to form new stars and planets, giving us a fascinating peak into
02:59the cosmic cycle of death and rebirth.
03:02The fourth snapshot wasn't so much an image, but the first full colour spectrum of WASP-96b,
03:09a giant, mostly gaseous exoplanet that's half the mass of Jupiter and is located nearly
03:161,150 light-years from Earth.
03:20First discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is so close to its sun that a single orbit takes just 3.4
03:26Earth days.
03:27By studying the way light is absorbed and re-emitted by this planet's atmosphere, the
03:32web was able to detect water vapour.
03:34If scientists can spot molecules like methane or carbon dioxide on other planets, they could
03:40use it as a way to hunt for life beyond our solar system.
03:45And we've saved the best till last.
03:47This image, called the web's first deep field, shows a cluster of galaxies with a combined
03:52gravity that is so strong they act as a gigantic magnifying lens, warping and concentrating
03:58distant starlight in an effect called gravitational lensing.
04:02This doesn't just enable us to see deeper into the universe, but because light travels
04:07at a fixed speed, allows us to detect older light emitted further back in the universe past,
04:13an optical time machine through which we can glimpse the faintest glimmerings of starlight
04:18from the first ever galaxies.
04:20Now if none of this has melted your brain so far, every light source in this image that
04:25doesn't have the characteristic diffraction spikes of a star is a galaxy, and each galaxy
04:30here contains billions of stars and trillions of worlds.
04:34All of this is contained within an image that is just the tiniest slice of sky, the equivalent
04:39of holding a sand grain up at arm's length.
04:42And for all the unprecedented and staggering depth in this image, it took the James Webb just
04:48twelve and a half hours to capture it.
04:51And these images are just the beginning.
04:52Now that the telescope is in operation, scientists from all over the world will be using it to
04:57explore space like it has never been explored before.
05:00We don't know yet what the James Webb Space Telescope will teach us, but one thing we do
05:05know for certain is that our understanding of our universe is about to be changed forever.
05:12Hello, thanks again.
05:16Bye-bye.
05:17Bye-bye.
05:17Bye-bye.
05:18Bye-bye.
05:19Bye-bye.
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