The Official *NASA* Webb X account. The world's most powerful space telescope. Launched: Dec. 25, 2021. First images revealed: July 12, 2022.
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ALT On an abstract purple space-inspired background, illustrations of 11 space telescopes form the shape of a heart around another. Each telescope is shaded in a monochrome blue palette, and they have a variety of different shapes and features. These spacecraft are not depicted to scale. Credit: NASA
ALT A field full of small galaxies of all shapes against the blackness of space. A few bright white stars show 8 prominent diffraction spikes. A small galaxy at lower right is highlighted with a white box. A shaded triangle extends upward to the corners of a larger box showing a zoom in of the region. Two fuzzy, light blue blobs are at center, with a larger and brighter one at top. Just above the top blob is a white crosshair showing the location where a fast radio burst was detected.
ALT A young star cluster filled with many stars that display Webb’s unique eight-pronged diffraction pattern. At its center is a yellow star which sports the largest diffraction pattern. To the left of the star, there is a region filled with yellow dust and gas that extends from the star to the left border of the image. This yellow region extends from the bottom, covering about two-thirds of the image. The yellow region has several blue stars of different sizes embedded within. The top third, which lies outside of the yellow region, holds a few bright protostars, within dense gray gas. Those stars illuminate the gas, making it appear blue. A few red outflows from other protostars are visible above this grayish-blue region. To the right of the central star, there is a clumpy, flame-like plume of red dust and gas with protostars that emit a soft white light within. The plume is surrounded by more dense gray gas and dust. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Processing: Alyssa Pagan.
ALT A young star cluster filled with many stars that display Webb’s unique eight-pronged diffraction pattern. At its center is a yellow star which sports the largest diffraction pattern. To the left of the star, there is a region filled with yellow dust and gas that extends from the star to the left border of the image. This yellow region extends from the bottom, covering about two-thirds of the image. The yellow region has several blue stars of different sizes embedded within. The top third, which lies outside of the yellow region, holds a few bright protostars, within dense gray gas. Those stars illuminate the gas, making it appear blue. A few red outflows from other protostars are visible above this grayish-blue region. To the right of the central star, there is a clumpy, flame-like plume of red dust and gas with protostars that emit a soft white light within. The plume is surrounded by more dense gray gas and dust. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Processing: Alyssa Pagan.
ALT Artist’s concept of a star and its debris disk against the black background of space. The star is in the background, right of center, and depicted as a small, luminous sphere. The debris disk is a large blue ring that encircles the star. The debris disk is angled toward the viewer, so that the portion nearest to the viewer extends beyond the bottom frame of the illustration. Many dark, rocky fragments are scattered throughout the debris disk. In the foreground, toward the left, is a small planetary embryo colliding into the left side of a larger spherical object. The impact site glows bright yellow and orange and has a mottled appearance, as though chunks of both colliding bodies are breaking up and being destroyed. Orange-yellow streams of vapor extend outward from the collision area. Behind the debris disk and its star are many small stars in the background. A label in the bottom right corner reads “Artist’s Concept.”
ALT Extreme Debris Disks, Composition Across Time plot and corresponding timeline of the solar system. The plot’s y-axis is labeled Silica with an up arrow labeled rich and a down arrow labeled poor. X-axis is labeled Age (millions of years) and starts with 1 at the left and increases by factors of ten, ending with 1000 at right. A key at right has 3 symbols: black dot is Silica-rich disk, purple is Silica-poor disk, and orange is Protoplanetary disk. All 27 orange dots are within the first 10 million years and range in silica composition. The 8 black and 13 purple dots begin to appear around 10 million. The black dots stop around 100 million. The purple dots continue right. The timeline below has the same labels as the plot’s x-axis. A gray band before 100 marks the Moon-forming impact. A gray band before 1000 marks the Late heavy bombardment. 3 blue bands stretch from left to right: Giant planet formation, Terrestrial planet formation, and Giant planet migration/orbital instability.
ALT A massive galaxy cluster, made of many golden elliptical galaxies with the largest, brightest one in the center. Heavily distorted orange galaxies appear all around the cluster, the largest concentrated in a large arc around the cluster's center; these are images of very distant galaxies, created by gravitational lensing. A few galaxies are large and bluish-white in color; bright, nearby stars are the same color.
ALT A horizontally oriented poster with an image of Centaurus A against a black background. The galaxy is brightest at its center, where a brilliant white and pink glow radiates outward. Wispy, 'S'-shaped ribbons of pink arc above and below the center of the image. A parallelogram-shaped band of gray and white dust cuts across the middle of the galaxy. The galaxy’s outer edges fade into soft textures that stretch toward the left and right sides of the image. Along the bottom is a series of thin vertical bars ranging from purple at left to blue, green, yellow, orange, and red at right. Bars are separated slightly, with black in between. Bar colors are brightest at the bottom, fading up to black. Brightness varies from bar to bar, giving the array an undulating feel. At upper right is text that reads, "National Aeronautics and Space Administration" and NASA’s blue, white, and red meatball insignia. Title text appears at lower left that says, "James Webb Space Telescope: Centaurus A."
ALT A star-forming region. The left two thirds of the image is blanketed in thick clouds of green and yellow gas and dust that form swirling patterns. Some of the gas is spread into thin, thready wisps. The right third of the image is the black background speckled with stars and multi-colored dots that represent distant galaxies. Bright stars are scattered throughout the clouds, with the densest cluster situated in the center of the scene. Each is crowned with six long spikes and two shorter spikes created by the optics of the telescope’s mirrors.
ALT Bright stars with 8 pointed diffraction spikes are at top center. There are long columns of reddish gas going from left to center, and diagonally across the top right corner. At top left is a tilted hour-glass shaped orange burst of gas. The background is deep blue and other galaxies are sprinkled acros the background.
ALT An irregular galaxy, appearing like a broad band of tiny stars. It is denser on one side, with a faint cloud of gas among the stars. Clumps of brighter points are newly formed stars, with the largest lights being star clusters, and with many surrounded in glowing blue gas clouds. Plumes of red dust surround the galaxy. A foreground star appears