President Biden Reveals First James Webb Space Telescope Image

(CNN) — We already have the first glimpse of how the James Webb Space Telescope will change the way people see the universe. US President Joe Biden unveiled one of the first images from the telescope Monday at the White House during a preview event with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The image shows SMACS 0723, a galaxy cluster that acts as a magnifying glass for objects behind it. Called gravitational lensing, this created the telescope’s first deep-field view of thousands of galaxies, including incredibly old and distant faint galaxies. “This portion of the vast universe covers a patch of sky about the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground,” according to a NASA statement. “It is the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken,” according to Nelson. The rest of the high-resolution color images will make their debut as scheduled on Tuesday, July 12. The space observatory, which launched in December, will be able to peer into the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe began by viewing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. The release of the first image will highlight the scientific capabilities of the James Webb Telescope, as well as the ability of its huge golden mirror and science instruments to produce spectacular images. There are several events taking place during Tuesday’s image release, all of which will be streamed live on NASA’s website. Opening remarks from NASA leadership and the James Webb Telescope team will begin Tuesday at 9:45 am ET, followed by an image release broadcast beginning at 10:30 am ET. The images will be revealed one by one, and a press conference at 12:30 pm ET will provide more details. The first images NASA shared the first cosmic targets from the James Webb Telescope on Friday, a preview of what Tuesday’s image release will include: the Carina Nebula, WASP-96b, the South Ring Nebula and Stephan’s Quintet. Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery, where stars are born. It is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and is home to many stars much more massive than our sun. The James Webb Telescope’s study of the gas giant planet WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The spectrum will include different wavelengths of light that could reveal new information about the planet, such as whether it has an atmosphere. Discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is located 1,150 light-years from Earth. It is half the mass of Jupiter and completes one orbit around its star every 3.4 days. This test image was taken by the Webb Fine Guidance Sensor over a period of eight days in early May. It shows how Webb can capture detailed images of very faint objects.