1st Webb Telescope image reveals earliest galaxies formed after Big Bang

US President Joe Biden has released one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.

Key points:

• Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time.
• This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.
• This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totalling 12.5 hours achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.