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9 Webb Images That Look Unreal

Every one of these is a real photograph, not art. Counting down to the picture that took 6,500 years of travelling light to arrive.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

9. Uranus Wears Its Rings

Uranus has 13 known rings, and Webb picked out 11 of them — including the faint zeta ring nobody had imaged since Voyager 2 flew past in 1986.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

8. Jupiter With the Lights On

Infrared turns Jupiter inside out. Auroras blaze at both poles, and the Great Red Spot comes out white — its high hazes are reflecting sunlight straight back.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

7. A Star Caught Dying

The Southern Ring Nebula sits 2,500 light-years away. Webb found two stars at its heart: the dim one shedding these shells, the bright one just along for the ride.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

6. A Galaxy Hit Head-On

The Cartwheel lies 500 million light-years off. A smaller galaxy punched clean through its middle, and the shock is still rippling outward as that bright rim.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

5. Five Galaxies, One Frame

Stephan's Quintet was Webb's largest image at release: 150 million pixels stitched from almost 1,000 files. Four of the five are locked in a slow collision.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

4. Inside the Tarantula

This nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud makes stars faster than anywhere nearby. The blue cluster at its centre is carving that cavity with sheer radiation.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

3. Baby Suns Next Door

Rho Ophiuchi is the closest star-forming region to us at 390 light-years. Around 50 young stars sit here, most of them about the mass of our own Sun.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

2. Thousands of Galaxies

Webb's first deep field covers a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. It took 12.5 hours. Hubble needed weeks to go half as deep.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

1. The Pillars of Creation

Hubble made these columns famous in 1995. Webb saw through the dust to the newborn stars inside — the crimson blobs are only a few hundred thousand years old.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

And It Is Still Looking

Webb sits a million miles from Earth, cold enough to see heat from the first galaxies. Four years of science in, the strangest picture is probably still ahead.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
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