In July, NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency celebrated one year of the telescope being in operation. A dying star comes to life.
A ring nebula is an example of a planetary nebula, which includes an expanding shell of glowing gas expelled by a star late in its life. The ring nebula is thought to be simple, round objects with a single dying star at the center. New details of the structures within the object known as M57 and NHC6720 were captured by the Near-Infrared Camera.
The images of objects closer to home were captured by the telescope this year. The next image is the first of 4.
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A new light was shone on the ice world's 13 faint, dusty rings. The polar cap of Uranus is visible on the right side of the image, which disappears in the fall.
NASA shared more images of Uranus taken by the JWST with amazing detail of all 13 rings and the polar region.
The image below shows a pair of young stars more than 1,500 light-years away. The stars take millions of years to form, but Herbig-Haro 46/47 is a few thousand years old. An excerpt from the Herbig-Haro 46/47 was posted on social media in August because of an orange question mark. The question mark is spotted by the telescope.
In July, NASA released video and images of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex for the first anniversary. NASA put out a video tour to show all the details in this image.
The molecule is important because it helps more complex carbon-based molecules form. The image above is a combo of photos taken by the JWST using its NIRCAM andMIRI instruments.
The image shows a remnant of a supernova in the constellation. The marks are where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar material.
The image below of Wolf-Rayet 124 was taken by the JWST last year as part of the Webb Early Release Observations, which was shared publicly in early 2023. Wolf-Rayet 124 is located in the constellation Sagittarius and was captured in a rare pre-super nova phase.
The central region of the Chamaeleon I dark cloud was captured by the NIR cam at the beginning of the year. The blue center of the cloud is illuminated by the glow of a Protostar and light from stars in orange reflects ice in the cloud, according to NASA. Astronomers used the images and data from the telescope to complete an inventory of ices in the region with important ingredients for planetary formation. NASA said that this is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets. If you missed any of these images this year, you can view them all here. In the new year, scientists will fine-tune their techniques with the telescope's capabilities, and there is much more to come from it.