A sparkling landscape of baby stars. A foamy blue and orange view of a dying star. Five galaxies in a cosmic dance. The splendors of the universe glowed in a new batch of images released on Tuesday, July 12,  from NASA’s powerful new telescope. The unveiling from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope began Monday at the White House with a sneak peek of the first shot — a jumble of distant galaxies that went deeper into the cosmos than humanity has ever seen.

Tuesday’s releases showed parts of the universe seen by other telescopes. But Webb’s sheer power, distant location from Earth and use of the infrared light spectrum showed them in a new light that scientists said was almost as much art as science.

“It’s the beauty but also the story,” NASA senior Webb scientist John Mather, a Nobel laureate, said after the reveal. “It’s the story of where did we come from.”

And, he said, the more he looked at the images, the more he became convinced that life exists elsewhere in those thousands of stars and hundreds of galaxies.

With Webb, scientist hope to glimpse light from the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago, just 100 million years from the universe-creating Big Bang. The telescope also will scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of life. “Every image is a new discovery and each will give humanity a view of the humanity that we’ve never seen before,’’ NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday, rhapsodizing over images showing “the formation of stars, devouring black holes.” Webb’s use of the infrared light spectrum allows the telescope to see through the cosmic dust and see faraway light from the corners of the universe, scientists said.

“We’ve really changed the understanding of our universe,” said European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher.

The European and Canadian space agencies joined NASA in building the telescope, which was launched in December after years of delays and cost overruns. Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful, but aging Hubble Space Telescope.

Some of Hubble’s most stunning images have been shots of the Carina nebula, one of the bright stellar nurseries in the sky, about 7,600 light-years away. Webb project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan decided to focus one of Webb’s early gazes on that location because he knew it would be the frameable beauty shot. The result was an image of a colorful landscape of bubbles and cavities where stars were being born. “This is art,” Pontoppidan said. “I really wanted to have that landscape. It has that contrast. We have the blue. We have golden. There’s dark. There’s bright. There’s just a sharp image.” On tap for release Thursday: A close-up of Jupiter that shows one of its faint rings and a few of its moons, he said.

Source: AP