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First Images From the James Webb Space Telescope

Yesterday, the world got a glimpse of the incredible detail JWST can see, and today, NASA released more initial images, depicting a stellar nursery, an exoplanet, a planetary nebula, and a quintet of galaxies.

By Alan Taylor
A panoramic image of billowing clouds of gas among a field of stars
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

NASA’s newest marvel of engineering, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in December 2021, and is now in orbit around the sun, about 1 million miles from Earth. The successor to the famed Hubble Space Telescope, JWST spent more than a decade being designed and built. Yesterday, the world got a glimpse of the incredible detail JWST can see, with the release of its first image, an immensely deep look into a tiny patch of the night sky. Today, NASA released more initial images, depicting the spectrum of an exoplanet, a stellar nursery, a planetary nebula, and a quintet of galaxies.

About the Author

Alan Taylor is a senior editor at The Atlantic.