NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have released the first set of full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope — the world’s newest, most powerful, and largest space telescope. A total of five images were released, with the first image being unveiled by United States President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House the day before on July 11.
Five targets were selected by Webb’s science teams to be imaged and analyzed by Webb’s four instruments: MIRI (Mid-Infrared Imager), NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrometer), and the FGS/NIRISS (Fine Guidance Sensor and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph). The five targets of the images were the Carina Nebula, WASP-96b, the Southern Ring Nebula, Stephan’s Quintet, and SMACS 0723.