The First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed today. And I can't help myself but feel ecstatically excited. But some of us who haven't delved into the beautiful madness that is science (in this case astronomy) might not understand the sheer significance of this beautiful beautiful image. And, out of sheer ANGST that I have really no one (anymore :() in my fam to geek out about this shit... I'm THROWING IT ON THE WALL HERE! SMEARING IT ALL OVER - YEAH! This post is THE FINGER PAINT OF SCIENCE! Science! Science!

As stated in the link above, the image provided today is of galaxy cluster "SMACS 0723". Probably doesn't mean a thing to most, might as well Alpha-D-Beta NumberDeNumberDe. And that's fine, but we're gonna get back to exactly why that spot with the fantastically remember-able name in a moment.

So... real quick. Alot of comments around the net are meme'n off with "My god, it's full of stars". And I get it, but it's also making pale what this really is. Those aren't stars, those are GALAXIES! Each one of those glistening hypno-toads of dew-drop magic are a ballpark of 100,000 STARS! Red suckers are moving AWAY from the camera (WEBB), Blue moving towards.

BUT IT GETS EVEN BETTER!

Due to the nature of... heh ...!!SCALE!! that is the universe, all pictures of space are in some way an extreme sort of time snapshot. And this snapshot is the universe when it was only A FEW MILLION YEARS OLD! WE ARE LOOKING BACK IN TIME!! 13 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHitssocoolomg.

Ok, so... scale and coolness aside (and I didn't even MENTION Gravitational lensing), what's the big deal about SMACS 0723? Well... Hubble also took a picture of this spot back in the day, so now we can compare what Hubble could do then against the new HOTNESS that is now with WEBB.

Yeah? YEAH! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE! If you'd like to see it animated flipped back and forth, here's a tweet with a ".gif" that shows it off just so. (You'll have to click the link in the tweet for this one.)

Amazing! Thank you.

I made it into a little gif to really highlight the differences! pic.twitter.com/zDLd1Dt4eD

— Steve Gardner (@steeevg) July 11, 2022

So what's next? Well, for that I'll drop a quick tweet storm by someone who has already outlined what next far better then I need to. Pictures are pretty cool here too, so might be best to just jump into it there since the images don't embed into thumbnails here.

As you may have heard The James Webb Space Telescope will be releasing "data from its first five targets" on Tuesday. I'm no astronomer but here's what I've gathered about what that means, and what we'll see.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

Four of the five sets of data will come in the form of pictures of our universe that will give us both resolution and wavelengths we've never seen before.

Resolution means...just more pixels per unit of sky.

Wavelengths means kinds of light that we haven't been able to see.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

The other data set will be the spectrum of the atmosphere of WASP-96b, a gas giant about half the size of Jupiter that's around 1000 light years away. Webb promises to be by far our best tool for getting data on the atmospheres of exoplanets, which will be a tremendous win.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

As for the four images...here are our targets. Three of these are going to be absolutely stunningly beautiful visually, the other one is going to be the kind of picture that nestles into your mind and creates a weight that will never leave you. pic.twitter.com/SyYka8x7qN

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

This is the Southern Ring Nebula. It's a planetary nebula...gas thrown off by a red giant at the end of its life. This is a well-studied nebula, which is always a good early target as it will allow scientists to see now new data fits into the old. pic.twitter.com/uKFoWmZVSf

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

Second we have the Carina Nebula, a different sort of nebula...a cloud of gas and dust giving birth to NEW stars. It's one of the largest nebulas in the sky and it contains a variety of stars at different stages of formation. It's also just VERY CHARISMATIC. pic.twitter.com/HPLo9EEfrD

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

Zooming way out, this is Stephan's Quintet...five galaxies packed so close together you'd think they were photoshopped. Two of these galaxies are actively colliding! Again, a well-studied patch of the sky that contains TONS of opportunities for new insight. pic.twitter.com/5iXyxV1VSL

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

And then last, proof that they're JUST GOING FOR IT, it's SMACS 0723. We started quite close, just 1000 light years away, now we are going to look, oh, y'know, 13 or 14 BILLION light years away. And the way we are doing it is MADNESS. pic.twitter.com/SeP7oSGSJo

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

The promise of Webb has always been to see farther away (and thus farther back in time) than we have ever seen, and that's what this is about. SMACS 0723 is a galaxy cluster so massive that light /bends/ around it. And what is a telescope but a tool for bending light?

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

This gravitation distortion allows us to use this galaxy cluster as a lens. In effect, we are pointing the world's best man-made telescope at the universe's best natural telescope.

We're going to see what's on the other side of that, which is, very nearly...the beginning.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

So, get hyped. This is one of the coolest things humanity has ever done and the mission is just getting started.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2022

SCIENCE!!!!!!

~ ~ ~

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

― Edgar Mitchell