This is the picture astronomers have been waiting for

Webb is meant to observe more than just ancient stars and galaxies. The telescope can study nearly everything from the planets of our solar system to star-forming regions millions of light-years away. Unlike visible light, infrared can pass through cosmic dust, which means Webb will detect objects that are invisible to Hubble. And Webb is so sensitive, Casey said, that even when it’s not looking for a bunch of faraway galaxies, they’re bound to photobomb. “No matter where you look in the sky, [even] if you’re looking at a planet in the solar system, you’re going to see these galaxies in the background,” Casey said.

NASA is scheduled to release more Webb images tomorrow, marking the beginning of the mission’s science operations. Scientists are giddy, eager to dive into the data behind the pretty pictures. Some astronomers’ excitement is tempered by the controversy surrounding Webb’s namesake, a former NASA administrator who some say was complicit in discrimination against LGBTQ government employees in the 1950s and ’60s; NASA has conducted an investigation into the administrator’s past, but so far has refused to consider renaming the mission. Still, the general mood in the astronomy community is much more buoyant than it was in December, when Webb was still on the launchpad on the coast of South America. I remember sitting in the mission-control room in French Guiana and talking to Pierre Ferruit, the Webb project scientist at the European Space Agency, who wore a nervous expression just like everyone else in town. Back then, no one could have predicted that Webb would move so seamlessly through the extremely complicated deployments involved in its first several months in space.