for the first time we'll actually be able to  start answering some of those questions that  

we've always wondered about nasa just showed  off the first full color images from the james  

webb space telescope we've got the whole world  watching are you ready to put the first image  

up oh let's do it let's do it and these images  are just a glimpse into what jwst can really do

it took two and a half decades  to build and launch jwst  

the largest and most advanced  space telescope ever built  

unlike its predecessor hubble webb can observe  way farther into the infrared part of the spectrum  

giving an even better look at the first galaxies  formed after the big bang the telescope will help  

us tackle some big questions like how did our  cosmos begin and are we really alone out there

since launching in december the  telescope has had a busy schedule

and a few surprises originally it had enough  fuel to run for about a decade but thanks to the  

precision of its launch the telescope saved fuel  and doubled its lifespan to 20 years for the past  

six months the telescope was in its commissioning  phase that meant deploying it cooling it down  

aligning its mirrors and prepping its instruments  so far everything's been working great

which brings us back to the main event the first  imagery from jwst first we have the deepest and  

sharpest infrared image ever taken of our universe  it's a region full of thousands of galaxies  

and because the light from these distant objects  takes so long to reach us we're seeing them  

as they were when the universe was less than a  billion years old you see it at first and you go  

wait that's not a whole lot different than hubble  but then you remember that this is a whole new  

set of colors and then you are actually looking  far deeper than you ever could see with hubble  

then there's the karina nebula a stellar nursery  this image provides a glimpse into how stars form  

it was imaged by hubble but this new view  reveals new stars and some new mysteries we  

see examples of structures that honestly we don't  even know what they are like what's going on here  

and with webb we're going to be able to  see even more detail of those stars and  

actually even see through the dust into the  cocoons of dust where the stars are forming  

on the other end of the stellar life cycle there's  the southern ring it's a region of cosmic dust and  

gas that surrounds a dying star the telescope  captured two views in different chunks of the  

infrared spectrum revealing a clearer view  of the binary star at the nebula center  

then there's stefan's quintet a compact group of  five galaxies highlights here are two galaxies in  

the process of merging and a region of extremely  bright gas being pulled into a black hole  

and finally the team released the telescope's  first spectrum of an exoplanet's atmosphere  

this graph reveals the atmospheric composition of  a large hot planet far from our own solar system  

data like this can reveal whether a world may  sustain life as we know it in this case we can  

see the tell-tale signs of water vapor and this is  absolutely going to change the field we're finally  

going to be able to understand what it's like to  live on these distant worlds and what the climate  

uh and conditions are like on these planets this  is just the start all of these images came from  

just five days of observation and we still have 20  more years left we are at the start of something  

spectacular and uh it feels and for some of us  here that this has kind of reached an ending point  

because we've lived through launch and we've  commissioned it but now it's operating and the  

truth is we're just about to start the next thing  we'll do is actually make the telescope work even  

better we've got it up there working and better  than we expected even already when i started at  

infrared astronomy 50 years ago we couldn't even  have detected some of these sources yet you can  

see all this beautiful structure incredible detail  but it all worked and it actually over performed  

it just did better than we ever expected so it's  the best outcome and so this whole next year is  

going to be absolutely spectacular with result  after result after result and who knows we may  

even get something that we have completely failed  to predict had no idea would be something we see

so what are you most excited about  as jwt embarks on its mission  

let us know in the comments below  and make sure to subscribe because  

we're going to be posting new videos  every couple of weeks don't miss out