The first full-color JWST image is here

​​President Biden revealed the first full-color scientific image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Monday, showing off one of the deepest infrared images of the universe ever taken.

📸 More deets… The above picture covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground... and it contains thousands of galaxies.🤯

• To get technical, what you're looking at is a snapshot of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared roughly 4.6 billion years ago – the amount of time it took the light to travel the distance to Earth.

🔭 The first of many: Launched by NASA this past Christmas Day, the $10 billion JWST is the most powerful telescope ever put into space (where interference from Earth’s atmosphere is minimal). It’s tasked with advancing scientists’ understanding of how our universe evolved from the earliest galaxies to today.

• By using infrared light, the JWST is able to cut through cosmic dust and see further into the past than any other scope, revealing the first-ever cosmic objects that formed during the early days of the universe.

🌌👀 Looking ahead… NASA will reveal the rest of the JWST’s first images later this morning at 10:30 am ET (livestream); this batch will reveal the fine details of star formation, an exoplanet's atmosphere, a cluster of galaxies, and a planetary nebula.