Good news! In what started as a "sneak peak" picture of the above deep field, NASA has released a slew of images from the James Webb Telescope that will be sure to blow minds across the world. The above image took only 12 hours of viewing time using the telescope and shows how populated a tiny sliver of our sky actually is. Making this image more profound is the improvement that the technology has shown over the same image taken by the Hubble Telescope seen below.

It is amazing to think what images we will see when the Webb has weeks, months, and years to observe interesting phenomena in the cosmos. The first "official" images were released yesterday July 12th and really highlighted the capabilities of our new instrument, one that will define an astronomical generation much like Hubble did.

In the top left of the above image we can see a region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula, the scale of which is enormous - the tallest cliffs are 7 light years high! In the top right is "Stephan's Quintet", a grouping of five galaxies in infrared light captured in more detail than ever before. The bottom right image is a planetary nebula names NGC 3132 or the "Southern Ring Nebula". A dying star about 2,500 light years from Earth that has expelled it's contents into the cosmos in a violent yet beautiful display of gas and dust.

This is just the beginning for the Webb, and these images are just scratching the service of what the instrument is capable of. Stay tuned for a lot more to come from NASA and likely a few surprises as the telescope peels back the veil on our view of the universe.

Source: NASA