A 'stellar nursery' and a 'cosmic dance' are among James Webb's first batch of colour images.
SMACS 0723 is a huge cluster of galaxies. It's known to astronomers as a "gravitational lens" because the mass of the cluster bends and magnifies the light of objects that are much further away. Everywhere you see a red arc-like structure - that's something - a galaxy - way off in the distance and far further back in time. The light in some of those arcs has taken over 13 billion years to reach us.
The sheer amount of information each image contains is dizzying. But this treasure trove comes from only a few days of observations, and so far the telescope's only looked at a minute fraction of the sky. Webb will be capturing the cosmos for the next 20 years. "I'm thrilled and I'm relieved, because, you know, when you start something this big, there's always a possibility it might not work. It did work. We are so proud," he said on seeing the first pictures.
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