Side-by-side photos show how much more powerful NASA's new James Webb telescope is than Hubble

Business Insider

Side-by-side images show the first picture released from the James Webb telescope, next to the equivalent picture taken by Hubble.

It shows space in unprecedented resolution, a huge advance on the 32-year old Hubble telescope.More spectacular photos are likely to follow as James Webb continues to document deep space.

NASA released the first of a series of images taken by the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Monday.

The new image gave an unprecedented look at deepest space and was a stunning improvement over similar images taken by its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

The image released on Monday shows a huge sweep of space and the JWST has far more detail than Hubble.

It was taken with near-infrared sensors, which captures a different spectrum than a conventional camera. As well as getting better results than Hubble, JWST works quicker. Hubble took weeks to scan its image of deep space, while JWST covered the same area in 12 hours 30 minutes.

Zooming in makes the comparison even clearer. The images below compare Hubble and JWST renderings of a cluster of galaxies called SMACs 0723 as it appeared around 4.6 billion years ago.

The huge time frame is a consequence of how far the light takes to travel from deep space to the telescopes orbiting Earth…

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