Take a cosmic tour inside the images captured by NASA’s Webb telescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest and most powerful space telescope ever built, is now roughly a million miles from Earth, pivoting from one patch of the heavens to the other as it studies the target-rich environment that is our universe. The first handful of images were made public this week.

They’re stunning. They’re also loaded with information about the universe, the interplay of galaxies and the birth and death of stars.

Still, these images can be enigmatic to the average observer lacking a degree in astrophysics. What exactly are we looking at?

Let’s take a closer look.