US President Joe Biden released the image at an event at the White House.
At the event President Biden said, “we can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. We can go places no one has ever gone before.”
“These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people – especially our children – that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,”
US President, Joe Biden
According to NASA Administrator, Bill Nelson, “this image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.”
The image shares thousands of galaxies once invisible to us, making it “the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe, so far,” says Nelson.
“Webb is just the start of what we can accomplish in the future when we work together for the benefit of humanity.”
NASA Administrator, Bill Nelson
Webb senior project scientist, John Mather, says the record-setting image will help answer questions like “what happened after the big bang?”
He says it will also help us understand how the expanding universe made black holes, galaxies, stars, planets and people.
Astronomers see everything twice: first with pictures, and then with imagination and calculation. But there’s something out there that we’ve never imagined, and I will be as amazed as you are when we find it.”
Webb senior project scientist, John Mather
Webb’s image upstages the photograph of the same galaxy, SMACS 0723, taken by the Hubble telescope which captured the furthest star ever observed. Readmore.
