Dr_Nostromo Offline

Dr_Nostromo: "There is absolutely nothing special about the star known to astronomers as 2MASS J17554042+6551277. It’s a nice bright star, yes—about 16 times brighter than the sun. And it’s located relatively close to Earth, as these things go—about 2,000 light years away." source: Time.com

The left part of this image is a photograph of this star made with the Spitzer telescope. The right half is the recently released NASA photograph taken by the new James Webb telescope after phase 5 of the mirror alignment process. Even though there are still several steps to go in the alignment process, this image is better than what Hubble could give us and, many of the galaxies in the background (yes, those are galaxies) where unknown before this photograph was taken. I can't wait to see the images that it will produce when it's properly calibrated.

evergreendr: Wow! Quite a difference between the two pics. Amazing isnt it?

Joshua1701: Awesome

Fre2BeMe00: this is phenomenal and exciting .. thank you DrN for the pics and update

BraveSirRobin: It's my understanding that the small pieces of light behind the star are complete galaxies?

Dr_Nostromo: For the most part, yes... those are galaxies.