James Webb New Deep Field

New Deep Field ImageNASA James Webb Space TelescopeLandscape Print President Joe Biden recently revealed this stunning image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, during a White House event. "Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. 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. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe." Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI Publisher's Note:See below gif for a comparison between the image quality of Hubble Telescope with this newest release. While much of the quality is lost in this gif, we can see the Webb's upgraded hardware allows it to see many of the very red objects that are almost invisible to Hubble.