The image above has just been shared with us by NASA. It is the first in-focus image from the new James Webb Space Telescope. It was taken in the near-infrared, using a red filter to increase contrast. The bright star in the center, which has been named 2MASS J17554042+6551277, is two thousand light-years from Earth, so we are looking at light that left the star when Jesus and Julius Caesar walked our planet.
The telescope is made up of eighteen hexagonal mirrors, adjusted to nanometers (billionths of a meter) to form a single, large mirror. Further adjustments will be done, providing images that are even sharper.
These public images furnished by NASA never show the maximum information that can be extracted from them. Knowing this, I got what more I could from the image by further editing:
Stars and galaxies are strewn across the background like crumbs from God's abundant table.
Original image: NASA. Further editing by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
