Every image NASA has released from the Webb telescope, placed where it really is: its true direction in the sky and its true distance from Earth. Fly out from Jupiter's auroras to galaxies whose light left them more than 13 billion years ago.
Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI and the scientists credited on each image. Sourced live from science.nasa.gov/mission/webb. An independent MixinVisuals showcase, not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA.
NASA publishes every Webb image, video and spectrum on science.nasa.gov, each with a record of what was observed: the object, its right ascension and declination, its distance, the instrument, the filters and the credits. First Light reads those records directly and builds everything here from them.
Deep Sky. Each Webb observation with a recorded position sits in its true direction from Earth. Its distance from the center follows the logarithm of its real distance, so a star 25 light-years away and a galaxy 13 billion light-years away fit in one view. Where NASA gives a redshift instead of a distance, the light-travel time comes from a standard flat ΛCDM cosmology (H₀ = 67.7 km/s/Mpc, Ωm = 0.31). The background stars are the 5,044 stars visible to the eye (Hipparcos and Yale Bright Star catalogues), at their true positions.
Compare. Pairs come from two places: NASA files labelled "Hubble only", "Webb only" and similar, and side-by-side images whose two halves were measured to line up. Only pairs that matched closely are shown as sliders.
Staying current. A small server checks NASA's archive every six hours and adds new releases as they appear.
| Keys | |
|---|---|
| 1–6 | Deep Sky, Story, Compare, Archive, Watch, Mission |
| Space | Play or pause the journey |
| ← → | Previous / next image |
| ↑ ↓ | Nearer / farther region |
| M · F · Esc | Sound · fullscreen · close |
Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI and the credited scientists and image processors. Star positions: Hipparcos via d3-celestial (BSD-3-Clause). 3D: three.js. Built by MixinVisuals. First Light is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA, ESA, CSA or STScI.