What we're seeing here is a pair of galaxies
undergoing a dramatic cosmic dance.
And of course, a galaxy is just a collection of stars held together
by gravity.
And most galaxies, like our Milky Way, sit relatively undisturbed.
But what we're seeing here is two galaxies that are actually close enough
that they're interacting.
The penguin in this pair of galaxies used to be a spiral like our Milky Way.
And you can see a little bit of the remnants of that in that the eye
is what used to be the galaxy’s center and the spiral arms have unwound
to create the galaxy's beak and its back and its tail.
The egg is actually a galaxy
that is about similar size or mass.
Even though it looks a little bit smaller, it's much more compact, and it has less
gas and dust, which means that it's left less disturbed than the other one.
There
have been so many remarkable findings over the last couple of years.
It's definitely hard to pick,
but I study how stars in black holes form in distant galaxies.
So if I had to pick a favorite, it would be the wealth of information
we've learned about these incredibly distant galaxies.
JWST was specifically designed to look back in time
and find these early galaxies.
And what we're finding is that they're bigger and they're brighter.
They grew faster than we expected, and there are more of them than we expected.
And this is still a mystery.
We still don't exactly understand why, but I think this is
one of the most interesting things that we've found so far.
We definitely want to learn more about
how these very early galaxies formed so big, so fast.
And then thinking about scales that are a little bit smaller.
We want to learn more about how
individual stars form and how they form their planets.
And of course we want to learn
more about planets orbiting other stars or exoplanets.
One of the incredible things that JWST is able to do
is to be able to watch a planet as it passes in front of its star
and look at the starlight that's filtered through the atmosphere.
And by doing that, we're able to learn what actual chemicals
are in those atmospheres of those exoplanets.
And out of all of these anticipated discoveries,
I think some of the most exciting things on the horizon are actually things
we haven't thought of yet.
I think we have some surprises left out there for us.
The universe is filled with light.
Light that's both more red than the reddest
your eyes can see and more blue than the bluest your eyes can see.
And we can build telescopes in such a way
that they can look at different parts of light across the universe.
Of course, JWST is an infrared telescope, it sees the universe
in light that's a little bit more red than what your eyes can see.
But working together with other telescopes in space and on the ground,
we're able to see all the different parts of light that fills the universe.
And by doing that, we're able to put together a more complete story
of how the universe works.
You can learn more online
at nasa.gov/webb, and follow us on social media at nasawebb.
Telescopes are literally time machines.
And that sounds a little bit like science fiction, but it's actually fact,
just due to the simple way that light works in the universe.
So if you think about looking at a lamp across the street,
the light from that lamp
takes a teeny tiny fraction of a second to cross the street and get to your eye.
You think about light from the Sun
that takes about eight minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth.
And so you're essentially seeing the Sun as it was eight minutes ago.
You can think about stepping out to more distant objects in the universe.
And so as we do that, we're able to see objects that are further back in space.
And so therefore we're seeing them as they were further back in time.
And of course, JWST is the most powerful telescope we've ever put into space,
and we've been able to look back incredibly distant into the universe over
13 and a half billion years
to see some of the most distant galaxies that we've ever been able to see.
We've chosen a really
visually appealing image as this year's anniversary image.
And so we have this really cute penguin and egg,
and of course, it was picked in part because it is so beautiful
and so appealing.
But every single image that JWST takes is put into a scientific archive.
And scientists can use these images to do studies.
And this is an example of emerging galaxy.
And so scientists
that study emerging galaxies will certainly use this image in their studies.
And of course, one of the most incredible things
about this telescope is that it is so powerful that every time we take
an image, we get thousands of galaxies in the background.
And you can see that in this image.
And so this is just another example of an almost accidental deep field
where we have this wealth of galaxies in the background
that astronomers will undoubtedly study.