Opinion Webb telescope’s images show us a vision of what once existed and the potential of worlds that could come to be

Swathes of blue and orange swirling mysteriously in an ocean of interstellar dust; stars, like glittering jewels, on a bed of velveteen cosmic darkness; a landscape of peaks and troughs, secrets and auguries. A hint of water, perhaps, on a distant exoplanet, throwing open tantalising prospects of the possibility of life in faraway galaxies. On Tuesday, the James Webb Space telescope, the state-of-the art infrared successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, and a product of nearly $10 billion and three decades of collaborative research between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, rendered visible all the light that we previously could not see.

The new pictures, the deepest and sharpest infrared images of the universe possible yet, were revealed in the US in an event at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, heralding a “giant leap forward” in astronomy and the birth of a star here in our own galaxy. For, in its success, the James Webb Space telescope has upended the limitations of access, offering us the first concrete impressions of the cosmic evolution since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago and the genesis of the earliest galaxies a few hundred million years afterwards.

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The gift of astronomy is its potential to act both as an oracle and a soothsayer. At all times, a vision of space involves decoding clues to make comprehensible the remoteness of the past while taking a headlong tumble into a future radiant with possibilities. Light travels at a speed of 1,86,000 miles per second through space. Stretched by time and distance, what these newest images show us is a vision of the universe as it once existed and the potential of worlds that could come to be. Fittingly, it is a humbling affirmation of our own puniness set against the vast, ever evolving cosmos, and an enduring testament to the human capacity for curiosity and knowledge.