28.1 Observations of Distant Galaxies; 28.2 Galaxy Mergers and Active Galactic Nuclei; 28.3 The Distribution of and the fainter the objects you can see or photograph. Telescopes of a given aperture that use lenses (refractors) are typically more expensive than those using mirrors (reflectors) because both sides of a lens must be polished to The first full-colour image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe, shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb's First Deep Field, in a composite made from images at different wavelengths taken with a Near-Infrared Camera and released July 11, 2022. Spotted in a galaxy that existed just 900 million years after the big bang, the primordial star Earendel could offer a rare window into the early universe if confirmed by follow-up studies. By Distances to remote objects, other than those in nearby galaxies, are nearly always inferred by measuring the cosmological redshift of their light. By their nature, very distant objects tend to be very faint, and these distance determinations are difficult and subject to errors. U.S. President Joe Biden, pausing from political pressures to bask in the glow of the cosmos, on Monday released the debut photo from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope - an image of a galaxy cluster revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe ever seen. The White House sneak peek of Webb's first high-resolution, full-color image came on the eve of a larger unveiling of photos and The photo shows the distant cluster of galaxies SMACS J0723.3-7327, a cosmic magnifying glass about five billion light years away that is warping and amplifying the view of more distant galaxies guYHbWN. Space June 5, 2023 / 1035 AM / CBS News Photo shows star about to become supernova New image from James Webb Telescope shows star about to become supernova 0600 New images from the James Webb Space Telescope provide a glimpse into what a galaxy looks like 17 million light-years away. The images, shared on Friday, are part of an "astronomical treasure trove" focused on collecting star formation observations. The "delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters" are found in NGC 5068, a spiral galaxy about 17 million light-years from Earth, NASA said. According to the telescope's website, the galaxy is located in the Virgo constellation, and the latest images show it "as never before." Webb’s looked at galaxies from both sides now…From dust structures in mid-infrared light to stars in near-infrared light, Webb’s dual vision is helping us to see star-forming regions — such as galaxy NGC 5068 — as never before NASA Webb Telescope NASAWebb June 2, 2023 One image shows what looks like a glowing white bar, marking the core of the galaxy, the European Space Agency said. "Thousands upon thousands of tiny stars that make it up can be seen, most dense in a whitish bar that forms its core," a European Space Agency description of the photo says. "Clumps and filaments of dust form an almost skeletal structure that follows the twist of the galaxy and its spiral arm. Large, glowing bubbles of red gas are hidden in the dust." In this image, from Webb's MIRI instrument, the dusty structure of the spiral galaxy and glowing bubbles of gas containing newly-formed star clusters are particularly prominent. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team Another image captured by the telescope's MIRI instrument shows the galaxy with three asteroid trails seen by "tiny blue-green-red dots." But those asteroid tails didn't actually fly through the galaxy, NASA said. They only appeared because "they are much closer to the telescope than the distant target." "As Webb captures several images of the astronomical object, the asteroid moves, so it shows up in a slightly different place in each frame," the European Space Agency said. These galactic portraits are part of a mission to "create an astronomical treasure trove," the agency said, "a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies." Before the Webb telescope, seeing past the gas and dust that surround newborn stars wasn't possible. But with the telescope's unique instruments, NASA said astronomers could see "right through the gargantuan clouds of dust in NGC 5068 and captured the processes of star formation as they happened." Having this trove is an effort to hopefully help astronomers make more advances in star and space research. In James Webb Space Telescope News From Space Space Li Cohen Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue The White House released the first image of the collection of pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope during a preview event Monday. Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO hide caption toggle caption Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO The White House released the first image of the collection of pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope during a preview event Monday. Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO At first glance, the first image from NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope may not seem all that remarkable. But in reality, what appears to be tiny specks in space are actually galaxies — billions of years old. "If you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arms length, that is the part of the universe you are seeing — just one little speck of the universe," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of the image on Monday. And more than that, what's picked up in this image are some of the very first galaxies to form in the universe. More images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to reveal which galaxies in the far, far distance are habitable, Nelson said. The White House, along with NASA, revealed the first of a series of pictures from the telescope since it's launch from Earth more than six months ago. President Biden called Monday's reveal "a historic day." NASA had planned to release the picture today as part of a collection of the first scientific results, but determined the image is so dramatic that Biden should be the one to reveal it to the world. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the most sophisticated observatory ever launched. It left Earth last December. In late January, it reached its celestial parking place a million miles away from the planet. Since then, engineers have been checking out the instruments, aligning the mirrors and letting the telescope cool down so its instruments will work properly. "Webb was built to find the first generation of galaxies that formed after the big bang," says Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for the telescope. "That is the core science goal it was built to do." Before declaring the telescope open for business mission managers wanted to make what they call early release observations. These are intended to show that the telescope works, and as Rigby says, "are intended to be jaw-droppingly beautiful, powerful both visually and scientifically." The James Webb Space Telescope shown here being tested on earth is expected to reveal some of the most spectacular views of the Universe ever seen. Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA hide caption toggle caption Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA The James Webb Space Telescope shown here being tested on earth is expected to reveal some of the most spectacular views of the Universe ever seen. Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA In addition to the image containing the earliest galaxies ever seen, NASA will also release images of a stellar nursery where stars form called the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, and a group of galaxies discovered in 1787 called Stephan's Quintet. There will also be an analysis of the light coming from a giant planet orbiting outside our solar system with the prosaic name WASP-96b. Those additional images are expected to come out on Tuesday morning. Looking Back To The Beginning Webb is designed to gather and analyze infrared light, which is at longer wavelengths than can be seen by the human eye. That will allow it to capture light from the earliest galaxies, which appear in the infrared. Those early galaxies are far away — more than 13 billion light years — and as powerful as the Webb telescope is, they may just look like faint smudges. But those smudges will help astronomers understand more about how the universe as we know it came to be. One early target for the James Webb Space Telescope is a cluster of distant galaxies known as SMACS 0723. The gravitational field of these galaxies acts as a cosmic lens, allowing the telescope to look at far more distant and older parts of the universe. STSci hide caption toggle caption STSci One early target for the James Webb Space Telescope is a cluster of distant galaxies known as SMACS 0723. The gravitational field of these galaxies acts as a cosmic lens, allowing the telescope to look at far more distant and older parts of the universe. STSci One of the astronomers who will be conducting the search for those earliest galaxies is Caitlin Casey, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. She says one way to look for these faint galaxies is to point the telescope at the same patch of sky for a hundred hours or more, and let the light from these distant objects trickle in. The Hubble space telescope showed this so-called deep field approach could identify lots of previously unseen galaxies. But where Hubble was able to see ten thousand galaxies in a deep field, with Webb, "we're going to have a million galaxies," Casey says. Beyond finding new galaxies, Casey wants to understand the large structure of the universe, what the universe would look like if you could step back and get a birds eye view of it. "If you zoom all the way out, the entire universe looks like, you know, something like the interior of a sponge where there are these like little filaments and voids," Casey says. "So what we really want to capture is that structure." Much More To See But that's just the beginning. The breadth of science Webb can be used for is staggering. For example, Megan Mansfield, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona, will be using Webb to study the atmospheres of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. In particular, she wants to know about their atmospheres — "what they're made of, what their temperature is." That will tell her a lot about the planet itself, and whether it might be capable of sustaining life. Anna Nierenberg of the University of California, Merced, leads a team that has cooked up a clever way to use the new telescope to try to understand the fundamental nature of dark matter, that invisible stuff that makes up a quarter of the universe. "You simply can't do that with any other instrument," she says. "If everything works it will be a big deal." And as with any scientific instrument with new capabilities, no one really knows what secrets the Webb telescope will reveal about the universe we live in. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce contributed to this report. Astronomers have detected organic molecules in the most distant galaxy to date using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, demonstrating the power of Webb to help understand the complex chemistry that goes hand-in-hand with the birth of new stars even in the earliest periods of the universe’s history. The molecules — which are found on Earth in smoke, soot and smog — are in a galaxy that formed when the universe was less than billion years old, about 10 per cent of its current discovery is significant because it may help scientists understand how stars formed in the earliest stages of the universe and casts doubt on a long-held belief that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The international team, including Dalhousie University astrophysicist Scott Chapman and Texas A&M University astronomer Justin Spilker, found the organic molecules polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAH in a galaxy more than 12 billion light years away. The galaxy was first discovered by the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope in 2013. "This galaxy is one of the most luminous in the universe, forming stars at a very high rate — 100s of times more rapidly than our own Milky Way. We were hoping to get new insights in the chemistry of the gas supply for forming stars to understand how galaxies like this are forming stars so rapidly," says Dr. Chapman, pictured above right. "Thanks to the high-definition images from Webb, we found a lot of regions with PAH or 'smoke,' but no star formation, and others with new stars forming but no smoke. This is very unlike local galaxies — where if there's PAH, there are stars forming." Einstein ring The discovery, published in the journal Nature, was made possible through the combined powers of Webb and fate, with a little help from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Lensing, originally predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, happens when two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned from our point of view on Earth. The light from the background galaxy is stretched and magnified by the foreground galaxy into a ring-like shape, known as an Einstein ring. "We were amongst the very first users of the new James Webb Space Telescope. Its capabilities allowed us to detect the molecule in a galaxy that is extremely far away from us, and thus seen in the very early universe, not long after the Big Bang," says Dr. Chapman. "Previously, this molecule had only been detectable in relatively nearby galaxies." The data from Webb found the telltale signature of large organic molecules akin to smog and smoke — building blocks of the same cancer-causing hydrocarbon emissions on Earth that are key contributors to atmospheric pollution. However, the implications of galactic smoke signals are much less disastrous for their cosmic ecosystems and are quite common in space. It was thought their presence was a sign that new stars were being created. The new results from Webb show that this idea might not exactly ring true in the early universe. “Thanks to the high-definition images from Webb, we found a lot of regions with smoke but no star formation, and others with new stars forming but no smoke,” said Dr. Spilker, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy. A figure included in the Nature study. Nature The power of the Webb Discoveries like this are precisely what Webb was built to do understand the earliest stages of the universe in new and exciting ways. "This was incredibly exciting to get some of the first observations coming off the new JWST. And extra exciting to see how powerful the telescope is, and how well it works," says Dr. Chapman. The team, which included dozens of astronomers from around the world, says the discovery is Webb’s first detection of complex molecules in the early universe – a milestone moment seen as a beginning rather than an end. "Detecting smoke in a galaxy early in the history of the universe? Webb makes this look easy. Now that we’ve shown this is possible for the first time, we’re looking forward to trying to understand whether it’s really true that where there’s smoke, there’s fire," says Dr. Spilker. "The only way to know for sure is to look at more galaxies, hopefully even further away than this one." JWST is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute under the management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. Recommended reading When galaxies collide This week the Webb team continued to make progress in aligning the telescope to the NIRCam instrument. Between taking the data to understand the optical components, we continue to check out the science instruments. The NIRSpec instrument includes a microshutter array of a quarter-million miniature movable windows, each by millimeters in size. The microshutter array allows scientists to target specific galaxies in fields they are studying, while closing the windows on the background or other objects which would contaminate the spectra. We have begun testing the mechanism and electronics that control and actuate the microshutters. In recent weeks, we shared a technique for theoretically modeling the early universe. Today, we will discuss an observational program to help us answer some of those questions. Massimo Stiavelli, the Webb Mission Office head at the Space Telescope Science Institute, tells us about his planned investigations of the first stars and galaxies “The chemical composition of the early universe, just after the big bang, is the product of the nuclear processes that took place in the first few minutes of the universe’s existence. These processes are known as primordial nucleosynthesis.’ One of the predictions of this model is that the chemical composition of the early universe is largely hydrogen and helium. There were only traces of heavier elements, which formed later in stars. These predictions are compatible with observations, and are in fact one of the key pieces of evidence that support the hot big bang model. “The earliest stars formed out of material with this primordial composition. Finding these stars, commonly dubbed as the First Stars’ or Population III stars,’ is an important verification of our cosmological model, and it is within reach of the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb might not be able to detect individual stars from the beginning of the universe, but it can detect some of the first galaxies containing these stars. “One way to confirm whether we are finding the first stars is to accurately measure metallicities of very distant galaxies. The astronomical term, metallicity, is a measurement of the amount of material heavier than hydrogen and helium – so a low metallicity galaxy would indicate it was made up of these First Stars.’ One of the most distant galaxies discovered so far, known as MACS1149-JD1, is confirmed to be at redshift and emitted the light we see when the universe was only 600 million years old. The light from this distant galaxy has been traveling ever since then and is just reaching us now. “In the first year of Webb science, I have an observing program to study this galaxy and determine its metallicity. I will do this by attempting to measure the ratio in the strength of two spectroscopic lines emitted by oxygen ions, originally emitted at violet-blue and blue-green visible light rest frame wavelengths at 4,363 angstroms and 5,007 angstroms. Thanks to cosmological redshift, these lines are now detectable at the infrared wavelengths that Webb can see. The use of a ratio of two lines of the same ion can provide an exquisite measurement of the gas temperature in this galaxy and, through relatively simple theoretical modeling, will provide a robust measurement of its metallicity. “The challenge is that one of these lines is usually extremely weak. However, this line tends to get stronger at lower metallicity. So if we failed to detect the line and measure metallicity for MACS1149-JD1, that would likely mean that it has already been enriched by the heavier elements, and we need to look further and harder. Whether using my data or with future programs, I fully expect that during its operational lifetime Webb will be able to find objects with metallicity sufficiently low to hold keys for understanding the first generation of stars.” –Massimo Stiavelli, Webb Mission Office head, Space Telescope Science Institute By Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center And Alexandra Lockwood, project scientist for Webb science communications, Space Telescope Science Institute Post navigation Home News Science & Astronomy This infrared image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope JWST shows a portion of an area of the sky known as GOODS-South. More than 45,000 galaxies are visible here. Image credit NASA, ESA, CSA, Brant Robertson UC Santa Cruz, Ben Johnson CfA, Sandro Tacchella Cambridge, Marcia Rieke University of Arizona, Daniel Eisenstein CfAThe James Webb Telescope JWST or Webb has unveiled hundreds of ancient galaxies that could be among the first members of the universe — a leap from only a handful that were previously known to exist at the early as 600 million years after the Big Bang, these very young galaxies flaunted complex structures and clusters of star formation, a new study reports. The study is part of an international collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey JADES, which gathered a month's worth of observations from two tiny patches in the sky One in the Ursa Minor constellation and another in the direction of the Fornax cluster. Within this region were over 700 newly discovered young galaxies that reveal with the cosmos looked like in its earliest"If you took the whole universe and shrunk it down to a two hour movie, you are seeing the first five minutes of the movie," Kevin Hainline, an assistant research professor at the Steward Observatory in Arizona and a lead author of the new study, said while announcing the discovery on Monday June 5 at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held in Albuquerque and online. "These are the galaxies that are starting the process of making the elements and the complexity that we see in the world around us today."These new findings shed light on how the first galaxies and stars formed, creating the rich catalog of elements observed in the universe James Webb Space Telescope JWST — A complete guideIn those five minutes alone, which marks the universe to be between 370 million and 650 million years old, Hainline's and his colleagues studying Webb's data found 717 young galaxies — which turns out to be higher than previous predictions — with all of them already spanning thousands of light-years, sporting complex structures, and birthing stars in multiple clusters. "Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see just looked like little smudges. And yet those smudges represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe," Hainline said in a statement. "Now, we can see that some of them are actually extended objects with visible structure." Together, the two regions used in this study are referred to as GOODS-South, an acronym for The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, and have been extensively studied by nearly all major space telescopes, including Hubble, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and NASA's now-retired this previous scrutiny, 93% of the newfound galaxies that Webb spotted during JADES had never been seen image of the GOODS-South field, captured by JWST's NIRCam Near-Infrared Camera, shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. This image shows invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. Image credit NASA, ESA, CSA, Brant Robertson UC Santa Cruz, Ben Johnson CfA, Sandro Tacchella Cambridge, Marcia Rieke University of Arizona, Daniel Eisenstein CfA"What we were seeing before were just the brightest, most extreme examples of bright galaxies in the early universe," Hainline said during his presentation on Monday. "Now we are really probing down to more normal, everyday galaxies in a turbulent young universe."Precisely how that chaotic, very dusty environment cleared up to become the transparent cosmos we see today has long been debated. A leading theory is that this phase of evolution of the universe, called the Epoch of Reionization, occurred some 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when the first generation of stars — thought to be 30 to 300 times our sun's mass and millions of times more bright — formed and flooded the opaque universe with its first light. That ultraviolet starlight reionized the universe by splitting its abundant hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, a process that lasted until one billion years after the Big Bang. However, few astronomers say outflows from supermassive black holes, similar to the one that resides in the heart of our Milky Way, could have triggered the escape of ultraviolet radiation from galaxies and thus played a more important role in cosmic evolution than previously a second team from the JADES program that has been studying galaxies that existed between 500 to 850 million years after the Big Bang, or between five to eight minutes of the two-hour movie describing the universe, thinks it has an answer to the long-standing question."In this next scene of the universe, we are starting to actually see the impact of galaxy formation on the composition of the large scale universe," Ryan Endsley, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas who led the second study, said at the news conference on Monday. "Galaxies in the very early universe were just far more chaotic in general in how they formed stars."Endsley's team studied the signs of star formation in those very early galaxies, which provided insight into how starlight ionized the gas within those galaxies. The team found that one in six galaxies at the time showed extreme line emissions in the galaxy's spectra, a feature that atoms ionized by starlight radiate when they have cooled down and combined with other emission lines are evidence that early galaxies were actively birthing stars, which then pumped "torrents of ultraviolet photons" into their respective galaxies. This way, the universe's early stars became the main drivers of cosmic reionization, Endsley said."These extreme emission lines are actually relatively common in the very early universe," he said during his presentation. "Almost every single galaxy that we are finding shows these unusually strong emission line signatures indicating intense recent star formation," he added in the statement. "These early galaxies were very good at creating hot, massive stars."From the same emission lines, Endsley's team also inferred that galaxies in the early universe birthed stars in short bursts followed by quiescent periods."All of a sudden you would have tens of suns worth of solar masses being assembled all at once in these early galaxies," Endsley told reporters at the news briefing on Monday. "That's really important for our understanding of how reionization happened because these hot massive stars were very efficient producers of these ultraviolet photons that we needed in order to ionize all the hydrogen in the early universe." Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at community Get breaking space news and the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! Sharmila is a Seattle-based science journalist. She found her love for astronomy in Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot and has been hooked ever since. She holds an MA in Journalism from Northeastern University and has been a contributing writer for Astronomy Magazine since 2017. Follow her on Twitter at Sharmilakg. Most Popular The bright star at the center of NGC 3132, Southern Nebula Ring, while prominent when viewed by NASA's Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star's diffraction spikes, is the nebula's source. It has ejected at least eight layers of gas and dust over thousands of years. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption toggle caption NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The bright star at the center of NGC 3132, Southern Nebula Ring, while prominent when viewed by NASA's Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star's diffraction spikes, is the nebula's source. It has ejected at least eight layers of gas and dust over thousands of years. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The universe's splendor and breadth are on display like never before, thanks to a new batch of images that NASA released from the James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday. The images from the new telescope are "really gorgeous," said NASA's Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. "That's something that has been true for every image we've gotten with Webb," she added. "We can't take blank sky [images]. Everywhere we look, there's galaxies everywhere." The images reflect five areas of space that researchers agreed to target the exoplanet WASP-96 b; the Southern Ring Nebula; the Carina Nebula; Stephan's Quintet five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus; and the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. A nursery for the stars One of the most eye-popping images released on Tuesday depicts what looks to be cosmic cliffs, valleys and mountains — albeit with mountains that stretch to seven light-years in height. What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption toggle caption NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The image captures part of a "stellar nursery called NGC 3324 at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula," NASA said. It's roughly 7,600 light-years from Earth. "The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula's wall by slowly eroding it away," the agency added. "Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The 'steam' that appears to rise from the celestial 'mountains' is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation." Galaxies from 'It's a Wonderful Life' stun scientists The tight galaxy group called Stephan's Quintet is a "laboratory" for scientists to study the powerful effects galaxies can exert on each other, thanks to new data from the Webb telescope. An enormous mosaic of Stephan's Quintet is the largest image to date from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, covering about one-fifth of the Moon's diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The visual grouping of five galaxies was captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam and Mid-Infrared Instrument MIRI. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption toggle caption NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI An enormous mosaic of Stephan's Quintet is the largest image to date from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, covering about one-fifth of the Moon's diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The visual grouping of five galaxies was captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam and Mid-Infrared Instrument MIRI. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Researchers hope to learn more about how galaxies merge and interact, including triggering each other to form new stars, and how those processes might be impacted by supermassive black holes. The image casts the quintet in a new light, after they represented angels in Frank Capra's class film It's a Wonderful Life. "This enormous mosaic is Webb's largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon's diameter," NASA said. "It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files." Catch a dying star Webb pulled the veil back on the second star in the Southern Ring Nebula, using mid-infrared wavelengths to capture it in extraordinary detail. "The star closely orbits its companion as it periodically ejects layers of gas and dust," NASA said. "Together, the swirling duo have created a fantastic landscape of asymmetrical shells." The new image shows the nebula from a nearly head-on view. But if we could see it from its edge, NASA says, "its three-dimensional shape would more clearly look like two bowls placed together at the bottom, opening away from one another with a large hole at the center." Webb delivers a portrait of a puffy giant "WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas," NASA said. "The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014." The agency didn't release a photo but rather a spectrum analysis of WASP-96 b's atmosphere, garnered from Webb sighting the WASP-96 b as it transited in front of a star. A transmission spectrum made from a single observation using Webb's Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph NIRISS reveals atmospheric characteristics of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption toggle caption Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI A transmission spectrum made from a single observation using Webb's Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph NIRISS reveals atmospheric characteristics of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI A light curve from Webb's Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph NIRISS shows the change in brightness of light from the WASP-96 star system over time as the planet transits the star. A transit occurs when an orbiting planet moves between the star and the telescope, blocking some of the light from the star. Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI hide caption toggle caption Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI A light curve from Webb's Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph NIRISS shows the change in brightness of light from the WASP-96 star system over time as the planet transits the star. A transit occurs when an orbiting planet moves between the star and the telescope, blocking some of the light from the star. Illustration NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The analysis found the "chemical fingerprint" of water in the atmosphere, said Knicole Colon, a research astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. A look at some of the universe's first galaxies ever The trove of images comes one day after a jaw-dropping first image was published by NASA and the White House, more than six months after the telescope was launched from Earth. That first image showed the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb's First Deep Field. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, this composite image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared billion years ago. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI hide caption toggle caption NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, this composite image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared billion years ago. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI "If you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm's length, that is the part of the universe you are seeing — just one little speck of the universe," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Monday. But that speck contains multitudes. And thanks to the telescope's deep and sharp infrared images, Earthlings are getting a more detailed look at distant galaxies than was ever possible. That first image comprises thousands of galaxies, with even faint and diffuse structures visible for the first time. "This deep field, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam, is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields, which took weeks," NASA said. The stunning displays amount to a rich lesson in the history of the universe some of the galaxies are more than 13 billion years old, meaning they formed relatively soon after the Big Bang. For instance, the image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 amounts to a snapshot from billion years ago. Aside from gaping at stunning views like everyone else, researchers will use data from the Webb telescope "to learn more about the galaxies' masses, ages, histories, and compositions," according to NASA. The Webb Space Telescope is the culmination of an international program led by NASA. Its partners include the European Space Agency, or ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency.

the telescope will photograph distant galaxies