Spectacular and groundbreaking snapshots of the early cosmos gripped the world earlier this week when NASA released the first images from its new super space telescope.
James Webb captured an unprecedented look at a ‘stellar nursery’, a dying star cloaked by dust and a ‘cosmic dance’ between a group of galaxies, along with hints of water vapor in the atmosphere of a remote exoplanet.
What is even more exciting, however, is that astronomers say this is just ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
It is hoped the $10 billion (£7.4 billion) telescope will also observe the very first stars to shine, detect habitable planets in far-away galaxies and peer back in time to within 100-200 million years of the Big Bang.
But apart from being dazzling, beautiful images of galaxies, nebulae and even the atmospheric spectrum of distant world WASP-96 b, what are the significance of the images to scientists, members of the public and humanity in general?
MailOnline has spoken to a number of astronomers to get…
