NASA Releases James Webb Space Telescope’s First Images

NASA has released the first full-colour picture from the James Webb Space Telescope. US President Joe Biden was shown the image during a White House briefing.

The image contains light from galaxies that has taken many billions of years to reach us and is the deepest, most precise infrared vision of the Universe.

Hubble required weeks to produce this kind of result. Webb discovered its super-deep objects after only 12.5 hours of observations.

Webb has analysed the atmosphere of WASP-96 b, a planet more than 1,000 light-years from Earth. It will inform us of the chemistry of that atmosphere.

The project has two main objectives, the first is to capture images of the very first stars that appeared in the universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.

The second goal is to explore distant planets to determine whether or not they may be habitable.

On December 25, 2021, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope launched into orbit.