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The 8 most extraordinary JWST images of 2024, so far

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Best James Webb Photos.jpg

Explore the otherworldly beauty of spiral galaxies and dusty nebulae.

Posted on May 26, 2024 at 8:02am EDT

The globular cluster NGC 6440 orbits within the bulge of the Milky Way. Observing this dense cluster has been difficult until the JWST. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Freire. Thanks to M. Cadelano and C. Pallanca.

Located about one million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope studies the universe.

Since its launch on December 25, 2021, the JWST has provided groundbreaking insights into the history of the Universe, and 2024 will be no exception. This year, the JWST has already measured “hot Jupiters,” captured the birth of stars, found evidence of neutron stars in blazing supernova remnants, and provided new insights into the study of spiral galaxies with wavy arms.

We’ve compiled eight of our favorite images from JWST 2024 that capture the awe-inspiring wonder of space.

A bright young star in the upper left quadrant shines through a thin layer of white-and-blue clouds against a dark background. The star is surrounded by a thick, octagonal orange spike that overlaps most of the frame. A greenish-yellow cloud mass appears in the upper right region of the image. There are several other bright spots in the clouds visible as yellow glowing dots, and another bright star with a small blue diffraction spike in the lower right corner.
Within the Large Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way) lies a giant star-forming complex called N79, which is ejecting stars at an astonishing rate, much faster than similar regions of the Milky Way.
Images: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak;
A black background is dotted with numerous white elliptical and red spiral galaxies. A dwarf irregular galaxy dominates the image, with a bright area of ​​white and blue stars at its center that look like two distinct clumps. This area is surrounded by brown dust filaments. A companion galaxy can be seen in the lower center of the image, which looks like a cluster of blue stars. In the upper right corner is a very prominent bright star with eight long diffraction spikes.
Two star formation bursts are at the heart of I Zwicky 18. This irregular dwarf galaxy was first identified in the 1930s, but scientists are using Webb’s powerful resolution and infrared sensitivity to look at I Zwicky 18 in greater detail and study the life cycles of stars.
Image: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, A. Hirschauer, M. Meixner et al.
In Webb's image, the spiral arms are made up of numerous orange-hued filaments, with thin dust lanes running from the nucleus through the bar-like structures to the spiral arms.
About 32 million light-years away from Earth lies NGC 1433, a spiral galaxy with a bright center.
Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS team
A bluish-gray mass of clouds rises about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image. Above that, striped translucent red clouds rise about halfway up the image. The top half of the image is a black background of space with one prominent bright white star with Webb's eight-point diffraction spike. Scattered throughout the image are other stars and galaxies, but few are visible through the thick clouds at the bottom, and all are significantly smaller than the largest star.
JWST has taken the sharpest infrared images yet of the Horsehead Nebula’s “mane,” revealing young stars twinkling among its blue-gray clouds.
Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay).
At the center of the image is a nebula set against the black background of space. The nebula is made up of thin strands of pale blue cloud. To the right of center of the blue clouds is a large cavernous bubble. The lower left edge of this cavernous bubble is filled with pink and white tones of gas. Surrounding the nebula are hundreds of faint stars.
Hot, massive, newborn stars lurk in the dust of NGC 604. This star-forming region is located 2.73 million light-years away in the Triangulum Galaxy.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
A barred spiral galaxy against a dark, nearly empty background. The entire galaxy glows a pale blue, especially the bar that runs from top to bottom through the galaxy's central core. It is dotted with small stars. The center is surrounded by clouds of hot gas and dust along the arms. The coral-colored arms are loosely coiled and slightly irregular, with several bright star-forming regions.
Hidden by a huge amount of dust, the JWST captured young stars in the giant arms of NGC 1559, a barred spiral galaxy 35 million light-years from Earth.
Images: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy, J. Lee, PHANGS team ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy;
A face-on spiral galaxy with four spiral arms that curve outward in a counterclockwise direction. The spiral arms are filled with young blue stars and are dotted with purplish star-forming regions that look like small blobs. The center of the galaxy is much brighter and yellowish, with a thin linear bar at an 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock angle clearly visible. Dozens of red background galaxies are scattered throughout the image. The space background is black.
Combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, this image of galaxy NGC 5468, located about 130 million light-years from Earth, was taken.
Image: Webb NIRCam + Hubble WFC3



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