Space is incredibly awesome, beyond terrifying or a little of both — depending on your perspective.
But some things about it are undeniably cool, like the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which President Joe Biden released Monday during a White House briefing, as USA TODAY noted. More images were released Tuesday, and wow, they’re incredible.
The images, according to NASA, “represent the first wave of full-color scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered, and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations.”
The powers of the Webb Telescope — “the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope” that’s decades in the making thanks to international partnerships — offer those of us on Earth the deepest views of the cosmos that have ever been seen. It’s able to show us thousands of galaxies and stars that have a psychedelic feeling to them, probably because it’s challenging to comprehend what exactly we’re looking at.
Nevertheless, the images are remarkable, so here’s a glimpse at some of the coolest ones.