NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is now perfectly aligned, as evidenced by this absolutely incredible image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that is around 160,000 light years away from Earth. Below, compare the new image with the previous one captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. From NASA:
Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer telescope was one of NASA's Great Observatories and the first to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared universe. Webb, with its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, will allow us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries.
For example, Webb's MIRI image shows the interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. Here, you can see the emission from "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," or molecules of carbon and hydrogen that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas. When Webb is ready to begin science observations, studies such as these with MIRI will help give astronomers new insights into the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems.
