NASA telescope beams first cosmic view of 'deepest' universe

Washington: 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 details.

President Joe Biden has released one of the James Webb Space Telescope's first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. The first image is brimming with galaxies and offers the deepest look of the cosmos ever captured.

The first image from the $10 billion Webb 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. That image will be followed on Tuesday by the release of four more galactic beauty shots from the telescope's initial outward gazes.

The "deep field" image released at a White House event 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.

"We're going to give humanity a new view of the cosmos," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters last month in a briefing. "And it's a view that we've never seen before."

The images 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.