Stop What You’re Doing And Watch This

See the Universe in a New Way with the Webb Space Telescope's First Images

Are you ready to see unprecedented, detailed views of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made? Scroll down to see the first full-color images and data from Webb. Unfold the universe with us. ✨

Carina Nebula

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars, called the Cosmic Cliffs, is the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb can peer through cosmic dust—thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability. Protostellar jets clearly shoot out from some of these young stars in this new image.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula: it’s an expanding cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. In this new image, the nebula’s second, dimmer star is brought into full view, as well as the gas and dust it’s throwing out around it. (The brighter star is in its own stage of stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.) These kinds of details will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Finally, you might notice points of light in the background. Those aren’t stars—they’re distant galaxies.

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies near each other, was discovered in 1877 and is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This new image brings the galaxy group from the silver screen to your screen in an enormous mosaic that is Webb’s largest image to date. The mosaic covers about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter; it contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. Never-before-seen details are on display: sparkling clusters of millions of young stars, fresh star births, sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars, and huge shock waves paint a dramatic picture of galactic interactions.

WASP-96 b

WASP-96 b is a giant, mostly gas planet outside our solar system, discovered in 2014. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved across the star. The light curve confirmed previous observations, but the transmission spectrum revealed new properties of the planet: an unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds in the atmosphere. This discovery marks a giant leap forward in the quest to find potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

Webb's First Deep Field

This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, looks 4.6 billion years into the past. Looking at infrared wavelengths beyond Hubble’s deepest fields, Webb’s sharp near-infrared view reveals thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—in the most detailed view of the early universe to date. We can now see tiny, faint structures we’ve never seen before, like star clusters and diffuse features and soon, we’ll begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

These images and data are just the beginning of what the observatory will find. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space—and for milestones like this!

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

alternatives to "ladies and gentlemen"

cads and wastrels

fellow scoundrels

ladies, gentlemen, and interesting miscellanea

beloved friends & tolerated acquaintances

entities of interest

paying audience members & assorted freeloaders

the fbi's most and least wanted

discerning guests & those of you with fuck all else to do on a tuesday evening

esteemed gutter filth

sonic x shadow generations trailer, january 31st 2024

Still feels weird that the same band made "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" and "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"

de gauche à droite:Lyry,Star Moon,Lyly

from left to right:Lyry,Star Moon,Lyly

pour ceux qu'avait pas compris(moi non plus je m'était pas comprise au début)

for people who didn't understand(don't worry,I hadn't understood me either)

In the first gif, you can see the loading icon like "say sike right now". Moreover, if an issue is dumbed down to literally "show me with the dolls" kind of explanation and people don't get it... Yikes

RYAN GOSLING "I'm Just Ken" wins Best Original Song at the 29th Annual Critics' Choice Awards (January 14, 2024)

@unpretty

I love villainesses isekais because they always open to some shit like "I've reincarnated as Evilla Von Lily, the empire's only princess and I'm destined to die after becoming affianced to Prince Rytius de Citrus?!?!?" and you think ok so just not marry him, right. Cant be that hard? But then chapter 1 in kicks in like " Evilla, sweetie your father and I are sooo glad you're marrying your Highness prince Rytius otherwise all these 56 orphans we tend to would spontaneously combust. Like, immediately. don't ask, we dont know how either. anyways proud of you" and youre like oh shit evilla

oh my god two words in that just UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE