James Webb updates: NASA reveals 5 stunning, new images from telescope
They are the highest resolution images of the distant universe ever taken.
The first full-color image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been released.
The images, the full set of which will be released Tuesday morning, will be the deepest and highest resolution ever taken of the universe, according to NASA.
The telescope will help scientists study the formation of the universe’s earliest galaxies, how they compare to today’s galaxies, how our solar system developed and if there is life on other planets.
Latest updates:
Galaxy cluster seen in new telescope image
NASA's newest image from the Webb telescope shows Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies located 290 million light-years away.
According to the space agency, the image "contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files."
The image provides new information about the cluster, including the birth of millions of stars -- as they happened millions of years ago -- and tails of gas and dust that are being pulled in different directions as the galaxies engage in a "cosmic dance."
The "most surprising" image, NASA said, is one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, crashing through the middle of the cluster.
New telescope shows image of dying star
A new image released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a planetary nebula, known as the Southern Ring Nebula, as it is dying.
The image shows a star expelling gas and dust as it dims with the ionized gas seen in "unprecedented detail."
According to NASA, the star at the center of the image has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions and the telescope revealed it is "cloaked" in dust.
NASA reveals image from Webb telescope of exoplanet
NASA has begun releasing the long-awaited new images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
One of the first images revealed during a televised broadcast Tuesday from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, shows a graph of the atmospheric composition of WASP-96 b, the largest planet outside of our solar system.
Officials explained that as the planet passes in front of star, the starlight filters through the atmosphere as it passed, which is broken down into wavelengths of light.
The graph indicates the presence of water vapor, which is evidence that the planet had clouds, which were once thought not to exist there, NASA explained.
The data also demonstrates, "Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away," the space agency said.
Telescope's 1st targets include nebulae and galaxy clusters
Ahead of the release Tuesday of the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA has revealed a list of the telescope's first targets.
Among them is the Carina Nebula, which is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky -- according to the space agency -- and located about 7,600 light-years away.
Other targets include WASP-96 b, the largest planet outside of our solar system, and the Southern Ring Nebula, which is a planetary nebula, or a cloud of gas that encircles a dying star.
The telescope will also examine Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies located 290 million light-years away and of which four are "locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters," NASA said.
The final target is the SMACS 0723, which is a cluster of galaxies that distorts the light of objects behind it and will allow scientists to look at planets, stars and other objects that would have been otherwise invisible to the human eye.