James Webb updates: NASA reveals 5 stunning, new images from telescope

NASA scientists revealed more details about the image of the Southern Ring Nebula taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The image shows a planetary nebula, or a cloud of gas that encircles a dying star.

During a press conference Tuesday, Klaus Pontoppidan, one of the telescope's project scientists, explained why the image is important.

"It's not just any star, it's a star much like the sun, or like the sun will be in 5 billion years when the sun dies," he said.

Pontoppidian said the star is pushing out its outer layers, including carbon and oxygen, which helps create other cosmic objects.

"There's a life cycle of stars," he added. "This is the end of this star, but it's the beginning of other stars and planetary systems."

NASA scientists said the images and data that will be collected from the James Webb Space Telescope will be groundbreaking in our understanding of the universe.

"This going to be revolutionary," said Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist for the telescope, during a press conference Tuesday. "These are previous capabilities we’ve never had before."

Her comments come after NASA released five new images with never-before-seen detail of exoplanets, stars, nebulae and galaxies in the universe.

Rigby said she cried from happiness after seeing the first images that Webb captured.

"It was a combination of giddy like, 'Oh my gosh, this is great,' and having a sob like, 'Oh my God, this works,'" she said.

NASA revealed the difference in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the first of which were revealed Tuesday, and its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

In a tweet, the space agency posted images of Stephan’s Quintet, a cluster of five galaxies -- four of which interact.

The 2009 image taken by Hubble was captured over the span of several weeks and show the galaxies surrounded by several stars.

Meanwhile, the 2022 image taken by Webb was captured in less than one week and reveals hundreds of star formations never seen before because the telescope uses infrared technology, which reveals objects invisible to the human eye due to being surrounded by clouds, gas and dust.

The final image revealed Tuesday from the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details about the Carina Nebula, located in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The image, which is actually just the edge of the nebula, shows hundreds of stars never seen before within the cloud.

Because of the massive amounts of dust and gas that exist within the nebula, the stars were not visible to the human eye.

The area, referred to as the Cosmic Cliffs, shows a "giant, gaseous cavity" as young stars that were recently born push down ultraviolet radiation and create the jagged-looking edge.