ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA
This composite image of nebula NGC 1333 captures minute detail of young stars and brown dwarfs. These details were previously obscured in Hubble Telescope's images of the same nebula.
NASA/ESA/CSA/M. Marin (STScI)
NASA released this image of galaxy Arp 142 on July 12, to mark the two-year anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
This Webb image shows a densely populated spiral galaxy anchored by a central region that has a light blue haze, known NGC 628. It's 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.
NASA/ESA/CSA/ STScI
In this new image of Uranus, the planet shines shine brightly, along with its many rings and moons.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope's shot of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A shows elaborate details visible for the first time.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
There are approximately 500,000 stars in this image of the Sagittarius C region of the Milky Way. The bright cyan area contains emissions from ionized hydrogen.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Galaxy cluster MACS0416 is seen here in exquisite detail thanks to a composite image created with data from both NASA's James Webb and Hubble space telescopes.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Tea Temim
Scientists are hoping to gain more information about the origins of the Crab Nebula, thanks to new details spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope.
ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA
This image shows the Ring Nebula in exceptional detail, like the filament elements in the ring's inner section.
NASA/ESA/CSA
Earendel, the most distant star ever discovered, can be seen in this image of the Sunrise Arc galaxy.
NASA/ESA/CSA/JWST Ring Nebula Team
The Ring Nebula is seen in breathtaking detail, in a composite image released on August 4.
J. DePasquale/CSA/ESA/NASA
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a high-resolution image of a pair of actively forming stars called Herbig-Haro 46/47. The stellar duo, only a few thousand years old, is located at the center of the red diffraction spikes.
NASA/ESA/CSA/Klaus Pontoppidan, STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed closeup of the birth of sunlike stars in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud, the closest star-forming region located 390 light-years from Earth. The young stars release jets that cause the surrounding gas to glow. The image's release marks the first anniversary of Webb's observations of the cosmos.
NASA
Saturn and its moons were captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope June 25. The image shows details of the planet's atmosphere and ring system.
ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the Orion Bar, a part of the Orion Nebula that is being eroded by stellar radiation emanating from the Trapezium Cluster.
NASA/ESA/CSA
This composite image, shot from the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI and NIRCam instruments, shows the bright clusters of stars and dust from barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Webb captured a burst of star formation triggered by two colliding spiral galaxies called Arp 220. The phenomenon is the closest ultra-luminous galactic merger to Earth.
NASA/ESA/CSA/A. Pagan/A. Gáspár
Dusty rings surround Fomalhaut, a young star outside of our solar system that's 25 light-years from Earth.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team
The Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 was one of the James Webb Space Telescope's first discoveries, spotted in June 2022.
NASA/ESA/CSA/D. D. Milisavljevic/T. Temim/I. De Looze
Stunning details can be seen in this Webb telescope photo of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, which is 11,000 light-years from Earth.
Space Telescope Science Institut/STScI
Webb's image of ice giant Uranus shows off the planet's incredible rings and a bright haze covering its north polar cap (right). A bright cloud lies at the cap's edge and a second one is seen at left.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope captured 50,000 sources of near-infrared light in a new image of Pandora's Cluster, a megacluster of galaxies. The cluster acts like a magnifying glass, allowing astronomers to see more distant galaxies behind it.
NASA/ESA/CSA
Stars shine through the hazy material of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud, which is 630 light-years away from Earth.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/A. Pagan
The James Webb Space Telescope spotted NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions near the Milky Way, located in a dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.
NASA/ESA
Two galaxies, known as II ZW96, form a swirl shape while merging in the constellation Delphinus.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope revealed features of a new protostar forming.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope captured a new perspective of the Pillars of Creation in mid-infrared light. The dust of this star-forming region, rather than the stars themselves, is the highlight, and resembles ghostly figures.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Webb captured a highly detailed snapshot of the so-called Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that's speckled with newly formed stars. The area, which lies within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years from Earth, had previously been captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, creating an image deemed "iconic" by space observers.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JPL-Caltech
The two stars in WR140 produce shells of dust every eight years that look like rings, as captured by the Webb telescope.
NASA/ESA/CSA/ASU/UA/UM/JWST PEARLs Team
The James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope contributed to this image of galactic pair VV 191. Webb observed the brighter elliptical galaxy (left) and spiral galaxy (right) in near-infrared light, and Hubble collected data in visible and ultraviolet light.
ESA/NASA/CSA/J. Lee
The James Webb Space Telescope captured spiral galaxy IC 5332, which is over 29 million light-years away. The observatory's MIRI instrument peered through interstellar dust to see the galaxy's "bones."
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Webb captured the clearest view of the Neptune's rings in over 30 years.
NASA/ESA/CSA/PDRS4all
The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the telescope's NIRCam instrument. The image reveals intricate details about how stars and planetary systems are formed.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team
NASA released a mosaic image of the Tarantula Nebula on Tuesday, September 6. The image, which spans 340 light-years, shows tens of thousands of young stars that were previously obscured by cosmic dust.
NASA/ESA
A new image of the Phantom Galaxy, which is 32 million light-years away from Earth, combines data from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA/ESA/CSA/Jupiter ERS Team
NASA released an image of Jupiter on Monday, August 22, that shows the planet's famous Great Red Spot appearing white.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the Cartwheel galaxy, which is around 500 million light-years away, in a photo released by NASA on August 2.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Webb's landscape-like view, called "Cosmic Cliffs," is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. The telescope's infrared view reveals previously invisible areas of star birth.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The five galaxies of Stephan's Quintet can be seen here in a new light. The galaxies appear to dance with one another, showcasing how these interactions can drive galactic evolution.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, left, and mid-infrared light, right, from NASA's Webb telescope. The Southern Ring Nebula is 2,000 light-years away from Earth. This large planetary nebula includes an expanding cloud of gas around a dying star, as well as a secondary star earlier on in its evolution.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
President Joe Biden released one of Webb's first images on July 11, and it's "the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date," according to NASA. The image shows SMACS 0723, where a massive group of galaxy clusters act as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Called gravitational lensing, this created Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies.

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Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer inside the heart of spiral galaxies, where young stars carve out glowing paths.

The space observatory can see the universe in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, making the telescope uniquely poised to look through the dust that obscures some galactic features when less powerful telescopes are used.

NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Lee of NOIRLab/A. Pagan of STScI
The spiral arms of galaxy NGC 7496 are filled with bubbles and shells created by young stars releasing energy.

Researchers participating in the PHANGS collaboration, or Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies, are using Webb’s infrared capabilities to study 19 spiral galaxies.

So far, the telescope has observed five of them in detail, including galaxies M74, NGC 7496, IC 5332, NGC 1365 and NGC 1433.

NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Lee of NOIRLab/A. Pagan of STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope took this image of NGC 1433, a barred spiral galaxy with a bright core surrounded by double star-forming rings.

In visible light, the galaxies appeared dark and dim. But Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument was able to see the ways that stars and star clusters can shape galactic structure. The never-before-seen details captured in the Webb images show how these intricate networks within galaxies are influenced over time as stars form and evolve.

“We are directly seeing how the energy from the formation of young stars affects the gas around them, and it’s just remarkable,” said Erik Rosolowsky, a PHANGS team member and an associate professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Canada, in a statement.

NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Astronomers estimate 50 000 sources of near-infrared light are represented in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their light has travelled through various distances to reach the telescope's detectors, representing the vastness of space in a single image. A foreground star in our own galaxy, to the right of the image centre, displays Webb's distinctive diffraction spikes. Bright white sources surrounded by a hazy glow are the galaxies of Pandora's Cluster, a conglomeration of already-massive clusters of galaxies coming together to form a mega cluster. The concentration of mass is so great that the fabric of spacetime is warped by gravity, creating a natural, super-magnifying glass called a 'gravitational lens' that astronomers can use to see very distant sources of light beyond the cluster that would otherwise be undetectable, even to Webb. These lensed sources appear red in the image, and often as elongated arcs distorted by the gravitational lens. Many of these are galaxies from the early universe, with their contents magnified and stretched out for astronomers to study. Other red sources in the image have yet to be confirmed by follow-up observations with Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument to determine their true nature. One intriguing example is an extremely compact source that appears as a tiny red dot, despite the magnifying effect of the gravitational lens. One possibility is that the dot is a supermassive black hole in the early universe. NIRSpec data will provide both distance measurements and compositional details of selected sources, providing a wealth of previously-inaccessible information about the universe and how it has evolved over time. [Image Description: A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star.

Megacluster of galaxies reveals its secrets in new Webb telescope image

Stars releasing energy created giant bubbles of gas and dust, or luminescent cavities, that gather around the spiral arms of the galaxies, and sometimes these bubblelike features overlap to form shells and a structure similar to a spiderweb.

“The PHANGS team has spent years observing these galaxies at optical, radio, and ultraviolent wavelengths using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and the Very Large Telescope’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer,” said Adam Leroy, a PHANGS team member and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, in a statement.

NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Lee of NOIRLab/A. Pagan of STScI
A Webb telescope image of NGC 1365 shows an intricate network of cavernous bubbles and shells as young stars release energy into the galaxy's spiral arms.

“But, the earliest stages of a star’s lifecycle have remained out of view because the process is enshrouded within gas and dust clouds.”

The observation program will continue to focus on different galaxies, conduct a census of star formation, and unlock more insights about the life cycle of stars and how these stellar objects influence the galaxies they call home.