Here's the first image from world’s largest and most powerful space telescope

NASA has released the first image from the world's largest and most powerful space telescope - the James Webb Space Telescope. This first image, which is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date - was released by President Joe Biden in a preview event at the White House in Washington.

Dubbed Webb's First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb's view for the first time.

NASA, together with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the full set of Webb’s first full-colour images and spectroscopic data during a televised broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12.

👀 Sneak a peek at the deepest & sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken — all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally, capturing it took less than a day!) This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to #UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/tlougFWg8B pic.twitter.com/Y7ebmQwT7j

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 11, 2022

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has also completed the months-long process of commissioning its science instruments as all of the seventeen modes to operate the telescope's scientific instruments have now been checked out. With this, the premium space observatory is now ready to begin full scientific operations.

The last of all seventeen instrument modes to be commissioned was NIRCam's (the Near-Infrared Camera) coronagraph capability, which works to mostly block incoming starlight by inserting a mask in front of a target star, suppressing the target star’s relatively bright light to increase contrast and enable detection of fainter nearby companions such as exoplanets.

"From the moment we first took images with NIRCam to start the telescope alignment process to the checkout of coronagraphy at the end of commissioning, NIRCam has performed flawlessly," said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy, University of Arizona.