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History was made today when the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released to the public. The photos were the culmination of a project that began in 1996 to see deeper into space than ever before. The images give the first high res glimpse at the galaxies that were once invisible to prior technology. What really put things perspective was seeing a video comparison of the JWST images compared to it predecessor the Hubble Telescope.
The first full color photos from the James Webb Space Telescope are officially the deepest ever view of the universe to date. As you’ll see in the one of the videos below our galaxy literally just looks like a tiny grain of sand at the beach when you look at the all galaxies surrounding us. From the perspective of Earth’s size our planet is smaller than molecule when the entire Universe is taken into account.
Video Showing Quality Differences Between James Webb Telescope SMACS 0723 Images vs Hubble Telescope SMACS 0723 Images Goes Viral
In addition to discovering new galaxies the James Webb Space Telescope scanned areas of the universe that were already picked up by the Hubble Telescope. For the image above showing the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster, the James Webb Space Telescope stayed focused on that patch of the universe for 12.5 days to create a high resolution image according to reports. By comparison the Hubble Telescope needed weeks to produce a low resolution SMACS 0723 image, with much less color.
To better understand the massive difference in clarity some Twitter users posted videos showing the image quality differences between the Hubble telescope’s SMACS 0723 and James Webb Space Telescope’s SMACS 0723.
With the James Webb Space Telescope giving us a true perspective of how vast the universe really is, it’s a bit frightening to think of the possibility of earth being only living planet left in the Universe. It’s a lot easier to believe that there are other life forms out there, and we’ll eventually come in contact with them at some point in Earth’s timeline.
Nevertheless there’s nothing more exciting than NASA’s quest to discover truth about what the universe is, and how it began. This was a major step towards that goal, and there’s more images to come.
