Top 10 must-see images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
Here’s a look back at 10 James Webb Space Telescope images that will knock your socks right out of the Milky Way.
Pillars of Creation star seen in new visualization from NASA’s Hubble, Webb telescopes
Using data from NASA's Hubble and Webb space telescopes, astronomers and artists modeled the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16 or M16) in three dimensions, creating a movie that allows viewers to fly past and among the pillars.
It’s been over three full years since NASA’s Webb Space Telescope began "unfolding the universe" as the space agency promised with stellar images and spectroscopy of other worlds.
In July, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency celebrated 3 years of Webb.
Here’s a look back at 10 Webb images that will knock your socks right out of the Milky Way. These images are in order of release by NASA and its science partners from newest to oldest.
‘Piercing’ Bullet Cluster
Webb’s extremely detailed near-infrared images of the massive galaxy collection known as the "Bullet Cluster" helped scientists turn back time and see what happened when two galaxy clusters collided.
The image below is a combination of Webb’s near-infrared light showing galaxies and stars and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory capturing the hot X-rays in pink.
This is the central region of the Bullet Cluster, which is made up of two massive galaxy clusters. The vast number of galaxies and foreground stars in the image were captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light. Glowing, hot X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory appear in pink. The blue represents the dark matter, which was precisely mapped by researchers with Webb’s detailed imaging.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC)
Cosmic cliffs
Early on, Webb trained its instruments on this cosmic feature known as the Cosmic Cliffs. However, earlier this year, NASA turned some of Webb's work into a 3D masterpiece. The new image was revealed by the International Planetarium Society to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first public planetarium in Munich, Germany.
Image of the Cosmic Cliffs, a region at the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI / NASA)
A combo act
Webb's powerful abilities due especially well when combined with other telescopes and instruments. This partnership with the MeerKAT radio telescope helps put Webb's image of the Sagittarius C region into powerful context.
An image of the Milky Way captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope array puts the James Webb Space Telescope’s image of the Sagittarius C region in context. The MeerKAT image spans 1,000 light-years, while the Webb image covers 44 light-years.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford) / NASA)
Cat’s Paw
To mark the third year of science, astronomers re-looked at Webb's image of the Cat's Paw Nebula, a star-forming region. According to NASA, this view shows a singular "toe bean," revealing mini structures of gas, dust and young stars.
Webb’s view reveals a chaotic scene still in development: Massive young stars are carving away at nearby gas and dust, while their bright starlight is producing a bright nebulous glow represented in blue. This is only a chapter in the region’s larger story. The disruptive young stars, with their relatively short lifespans and luminosity, will eventually quench the local star formation process.
Cosmic tornado
This image shows the "beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy," according to NASA. The result is a twister of a cosmic object.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. The young star is off to the lower right corner of the Webb image.Intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
Celestial fireworks
This fiery hourglass is the beginning of the process of creating a star, according to NASA. This protostar, at the neck of the hourglass shape, is about 100,000 years old, very young in cosmic terms.
L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is a molecular cloud that harbors a protostar. It resides about 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
Pillars of creation
The Pillars of Creation is one of the most beautiful cosmic images, studied by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and now by Webb. The view below shows the side-by-side details of each telescope's capabilities.
A mosaic of visible-light (Hubble) and infrared-light (Webb) views of the same frame from the Pillars of Creation visualization. The visualization sequence fades back and forth between these two models as the camera flies past and amongst the pillars. These contrasting views illustrate how observations from the two telescopes complement each other.
(Greg Bacon, Ralf Crawford, Joseph DePasquale, Leah Hustak, Christian Nieves, Joseph Olmsted, Alyssa Pagan, and Frank Summers (STScI), NASA's Universe of Learning / NASA)
Dazzling stars
The Serpens Nebula was taken by the Near-Infrared Camera, showing a grouping of outflows. The jets appear as bright clumpy streaks in red, according to NASA.
In this image of the Serpens Nebula from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows within one small region (the top left corner). In the Webb image, these jets are signified by bright clumpy streaks that appear red, which are shockwaves from the jet hitting surrounding gas and dust.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI))
Star birth
Another look at Herbig-Haro 46/47 in high-resolution near-infrared light. This view shows the tightly-bound stars buried deeply in an orange-white splotch.
At the center is a thin horizontal orange cloud known as Herbig-Haro 46/47 that is uneven with rounded ends, and tilted from bottom left to top right. It takes up about two-thirds of the length of this angle, but is thin at the opposite angle. At its center is a set of very large red-and-pink diffraction spikes in Webb’s eight-pointed pattern. The vertical spikes extend almost to the top and bottom of the frame. The smaller, fainter diffraction spikes in the center are aligned at a true horizontal, but one set of the longer, more opaque spikes run along the orange cloud. At the middle of the diffraction spikes is a yellow-white blob, which hides two tightly orbiting stars.
(NASA, ESA, CSA / NASA)
Neptune’s rings wows
Sometimes the most amazing things in the universe are closer to home, astronomically speaking. Among the first publicly released images from Webb included the first new headshot of Neptune and its rings in years.
In September 2022, just months after the first images, the telescope looked at the ice giant, providing a clear look at the mysterious storms on the planet and new crisp imagery of its rings.
Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image of Neptune, taken on 12 July 2022, brings the planet's rings into full focus for the first time in more than three decades. The most prominent features of Neptune's atmosphere in this image are a series of bright patches in the planet's southern hemisphere that represent high-altitude methane-ice clouds. (Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)