First image from NASA space telescope reveals deepest look of the cosmos

Washington, Jul 12: The first image from NASA's new space telescope unveiled on Monday is brimming with galaxies and offers the deepest look of the cosmos ever captured.

The first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the farthest humanity has ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of time and the edge of the universe. Thousands of galaxies - including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared - have appeared in Webb's view for the first time.

According to the details, the image will be followed by the release of four more galactic beauty shots from the telescope's initial outward gazes.

US President Joe Biden released the first full-color image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Monday, during a public event at the White House in Washington. The 'deep field' image released is filled with lots of stars, with massive galaxies in the foreground and faint and extremely distant galaxies peeking through here and there. Part of the image is light from not too long after the Big Bang, which was 13.8 billion years ago.

Seconds before he unveiled it, Biden marveled at the image he said showed "the oldest documented light in the history of the universe from over 13 billion -- let me say that again -- 13 billion years ago. It's hard to fathom."

This deep field, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours - achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields, which took weeks.

The pictures on tap for Tuesday include a view of a giant gaseous planet outside our solar system, two images of a nebula where stars are born and die in spectacular beauty and an update of a classic image of five tightly clustered galaxies that dance around each other.

The world's biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America. It reached its lookout point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in January. Then the lengthy process began to align the mirrors, get the infrared detectors cold enough to operate and calibrate the science instruments, all protected by a sunshade the size of a tennis court that keeps the telescope cool.

The plan is to use the telescope to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the early days of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus.

Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful, but aging Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has stared as far back as 13.4 billion years. It found the light wave signature of an extremely bright galaxy in 2016.

Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies' masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.