I remember the existential awe I felt the first time I saw the Hubble Deep Field image. It’s an image of a seemingly empty patch of sky exposed for about 12 days by the HST. It blew my mind because it shows a multitude of different galaxies gazillions of light years away. Some of the galaxies have been gravitationally lensed by large masses (other galaxies or dark matter) between us and the lensed galaxy. These appear as ribbons or strips. I think these are also known as Einstein rings.
Now the Hubble Deep field images are incredible, but what will the James Weeb Space Telescope show?! The image below shows the first deep field image taken by the JWST and shows incredible high resolution detail.
The Planetary Society’s website informs us that it was released on 11 July 2022. It is a high resolution, infra red image of a dark space between stars. The arcs of light are distant galaxies being gravitationally lensed by the mass of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 which is shown as it was 4.6Billion years ago!, THe earth is only 4.8billion years old, so the light that is being gravitationally lensed must be significantly older for it to have been lensed.
The Planetary Society website says that the most distant light in the image has taken 13billion years to reach us, the age of the universe is estimated to be 14.8 billion.
My mind is blown to smithereens by these images and the sense of vastness that they conjure up. All of the follies of humankind, the wars the crime, triumph, despair, they are all meaningless when considering the vastness of the universe and time.