A spectacular show of our universe

A new telescope that NASA has put into orbit around the sun, a million miles away from earth is changing our understanding of deep space. We are able to see far back in time, close to when universe came into existence. The images from this masterpiece are inspiring and breath-taking.

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Our universe, born more than 13 billion years ago, is dotted with stars billions of years old – largely dimmed and stayed in the dark. We did not have the technology to peer into this universe to see the far away stars and understand how we came into existence.

That is until now.

A new $10bn telescope that we have managed to put into an orbit around the sun, a million miles away from earth, is giving a peek into galaxies and constellations that have never been seen before. The first images released recently are breathtaking. They are also inspiring – to know what our tiny planet in a corner of the Milky Way could achieve.

To understand the significance of this moment in scientific history, we have to know the vastness of our universe.

The light travels more than 9 trillion kilometers in a year, known to us as a light year. One galaxy that the new telescope is now able to see is more than 200 million light years away in a constellation called Vega. This is not even the farthest galaxy out there. We can only be awed by the size of our universe. Importantly, when we see the stars with the new telescope in this galaxy 200 million light years away , we are actually seeing how these stars were 200 million years ago.

So, now we are able to see back in time, hopefully all the way up to the moment when this universe was created. We have our own time machine – well, almost!

Let us see a few images of deep space by James Webb space telescope.

**Stephen’s Quintet** : Five galaxies far away, with four of them dancing around each other, pulling stars away from each other’s gravity. We can only be happy that our own Sun is is in a quieter neighborhood.

**A Star Nursery** – A star nursery in our own Milky way galaxy, not that far from us, relatively speaking. This place gives birth and nurtures new stars. The enormous dust cloud slowly settles to create new stars and asteroids

**Southern Ring** **Nebula**: A cloud of dust around a dying star that is roughly half a light year in diameter. Remember that one light year is about 9 trillion km !! Eventually that dust floats around and can help create life.

**A far away galaxy** : A far away galaxy as seen more than 4.6 billion years ago. The new telescope revealed faint objects never seen before. This area is comparable to the size of a grain of sand held at arms length in a beach !. The faint galaxies beyond the horizon are expected to be even older and from 13 billion years ago, close to when this universe was formed

These images remind us of how vast this universe is, how little we know about the world we live in, how tiny our planet is and how transitory our own existence is.

Stay humble !