The Webb Space Telescope’s Best Images, One Year On

The Webb Space Telescope launched to space in December 2021 with an ambitious goal: providing scientists with a deeper, sharper view of the history of the universe.

It took the telescope a month to arrive at its location in space, a region called L2 that sits one million miles from Earth, and another six months to commission the telescope for scientific imaging.

Finally, last July, President Biden unveiled the first full-color image taken by Webb: a deep field that gave researchers a look 13 billion years into the past. Just months later, Webb would take a deep field image eight times larger than its first.

You can read in depth about how Webb images are colorized here, and about the people who colorize those images here.

Now a year since Webb’s scientific imaging campaign began, we’re taking a look back at some of the most remarkable images the nascent space observatory has captured. Here’s to many more snaps to come.

The Webb Space Telescope launched to space in December 2021 with an ambitious goal: providing scientists with a deeper, sharper view of the history of the universe.

It took the telescope a month to arrive at its location in space, a region called L2 that sits one million miles from Earth, and another six months to commission the telescope for scientific imaging.

Finally, last July, President Biden unveiled the first full-color image taken by Webb: a deep field that gave researchers a look 13 billion years into the past. Just months later, Webb would take a deep field image eight times larger than its first.

You can read in depth about how Webb images are colorized here, and about the people who colorize those images here.

Now a year since Webb’s scientific imaging campaign began, we’re taking a look back at some of the most remarkable images the nascent space observatory has captured. Here’s to many more snaps to come.