NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Delivers Its First Full-Color Images

NASA released the first full-color science images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the $10 billion infrared observatory launched in December 2021 as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The image set included the deepest and sharpest infrared view of the early universe ever captured, showing thousands of galaxies in a patch of sky no larger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. Other images revealed the Carina Nebula's star-forming "Cosmic Cliffs," the Southern Ring Nebula, and spectroscopic evidence of water vapor on the exoplanet WASP-96 b.

President Biden previewed the deep-field image a day early at a White House event, calling it a "historic moment." Scientists said Webb's infrared instruments would let researchers peer through cosmic dust to study the formation of the earliest galaxies, something Hubble's optical sensors could not do.