The images show our near neighbourhood in precise detail, and scientists help that it could further reveal what is happening on the chaotic planet.

Its vast storms, swirling winds and blazing auroras are all visible in the image, which was taken from the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam.

That camera has three infrared filters that are able to showcase details of the planet. But it means that its images must be mapped into visible light, and the blue on the image is the shorter wavelengths.

It revealed one image that showed Jupiter as it floats in space, surrounded by a background of stars. The widefield view shows not only Jupiter but also its faint rings, as well as two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea.

The image also includes fuzzy spots, likely galaxies that have snuck into the image.

The new images were actually stitched together from a number of images of Jupiter, taken from images in July. Scientists working on the telescope worked with a citizen scientist called Judy Schmidt to process them into one of the newly released images.

The processing used a variety of filters to help the specific parts of Jupiter’s composition shine. The auroras at the north and South Pole shine bright in a redder filter; the hazes around those same areas are lit up by a yellow and green one that picks them out as they swirl; and a blue filter helps show the light that is reflecting off a main cloud.

In the image the “Great Red Spot” can also be seen, though it is a bright white in the image itself. That is because of the large amount of light that is reflecting off it and other clouds.

While much of the excitement about the James Webb Space Telescope was about the way it would allow us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before, it has already been sending back new images of objects that are much closer to home.

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The telescope’s first full-colour images and spectroscopic data were released during a televised broadcast at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

These listed targets below represent the first wave of full-colour scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered, and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. 

They were selected by an international committee of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

These first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope demonstrate Webb at its full power, ready to begin its mission to unfold the infrared universe.

Check out the captured images below:

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

Some stars save the best for last.

The dimmer star at the centre of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust.

Two cameras aboard Webb captured the latest image of this planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 3132, and known informally as the Southern Ring Nebula. It is approximately 2,500 light-years away.

Webb will allow astronomers to dig into many more specifics about planetary nebulae like this one – clouds of gas and dust expelled by dying stars. Understanding which molecules are present, and where they lie throughout the shells of gas and dust, will help researchers refine their knowledge of these objects.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. 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.

President Joe Biden unveiled this image during a White House event Monday, July 11.

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