President Biden reveals the James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning first image
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
(CNN)The first glimpse of how the James Webb Space Telescope will change the way people see the universe has arrived.
President Joe Biden has released one of Webb's first images, and it's the deepest view of the universe ever captured.
The image shows SMACS 0723, where a massive group of galaxy clusters act as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Called gravitational lensing, this created Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies.
The presentation occurred at the White House during a preview event with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
"It is the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken," according to Nelson.
Some of these distant galaxies and star clusters have never been seen before. The galaxy cluster is shown as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.
"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," according to a NASA release.
The image, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, is composed of images taken at different wavelengths of light over the course of 12.5 hours. The Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields took weeks to capture.
The rest of the high-resolution color images will make their debut on Tuesday, July 12.
The space observatory, which launched in December, will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe began by viewing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.
The first image release highlights Webb's science capabilities as well as the ability of its massive golden mirror and science instruments to produce spectacular images.
There are several events taking place during Tuesday's image release, and all of them will stream live on NASA's website.
Opening remarks by NASA leadership and the Webb team will begin Tuesday at 9:45 a.m. ET, followed by an image release broadcast that kicks off at 10:30 a.m. ET. Images will be revealed one by one, and a news conference at 12:30 p.m. ET will offer details about them.
