NASA releases the first images from the James Webb Telescope: How to watch

After much anticipation, NASA this week is releasing the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission, including the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken.

“This is farther than humanity has ever looked before,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently said, calling the telescope and its images “nothing short of a real scientific feat.”

While NASA was slated to release the images on Tuesday, President Joe Biden gets the honor of sharing the first image on Monday at the White House. 

You can watch Biden release the image at 5 pm ET on NASA TV, which is available on the NASA Live page as well as the agency's Youtube channel.

On Tuesday, July 12, NASA will kick things off with opening remarks at 9:45 am ET. The images themselves will be released, along with data from the telescope at 10:30 am. These events will also be viewable on NASA TV. 

On Wednesday on 3 pm on NASA TV, the agency will air an event called “Webb's First Full-Color Images Explained.” 

The JWST was launched in December from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, as part of an international program between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Located 1 million miles away from Earth, the telescope was developed to study the evolution of our solar system.

The photos that will be released were chosen for their spectacular color imagery, NASA said, as well as to demonstrate the breadth of science that the JWST is supporting. 

On Monday, NASA gave a description of what the first images are of:

• Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.

• WASP-96 b (spectrum). WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014.

• Southern Ring Nebula. The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light years away from Earth.

• Stephan's Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan's Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1877. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. 

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