WASHINGTON, July 12, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - After unveiling the clearest view yet 
of the distant cosmos, the James Webb Space Telescope has more to come. 

The next wave of images on Tuesday will reveal details about the atmosphere 
of a faraway gas planet, a "stellar nursery" where stars form, a "quintet" of 
galaxies locked in a dance of close encounters, and the cloud of gas around a 
dying star.

They will be published starting from 10:30 am Eastern Time (1430 GMT), in an 
event live streamed from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, just outside 
Washington.

Targets include Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery, famous for its towering 
pillars that include "Mystic Mountain," a three-light-year-tall cosmic 
pinnacle captured in an iconic image by Hubble.

Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy -- an analysis of light that reveals 
detailed information -- on a gas giant planet called WASP-96 b, which was 
discovered in 2014.

Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of 
Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.
On Monday, Webb revealed the clearest image to date of the early universe, 
going back 13 billion years, NASA said Monday.

The stunning shot, released in a White House briefing by President Joe Biden, 
is overflowing with thousands of galaxies and features some of the faintest 
objects observed.

Known as Webb's First Deep Field, it shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, 
which acts as a gravitational lens, bending light from more distant galaxies 
behind it towards the observatory, in a cosmic magnification effect.

Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, Webb is 
orbiting the Sun at a distance of a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) 
from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point.

Here, it remains in a fixed position relative to the Earth and Sun, with 
minimal fuel required for course corrections. 

A wonder of engineering, the total project cost is estimated at $10 billion, 
making it one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, 
comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Webb's primary mirror is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide and is made up of 18 
gold-coated mirror segments. Like a camera held in one's hand, the structure 
must remain as stable as possible to achieve the best shots.

After the first images, astronomers around the globe will get shares of time 
on the telescope, with projects selected competitively through a process in 
which applicants and selectors don't know each other's identities, to 
minimize bias.

Thanks to an efficient launch, NASA estimates Webb has enough propellant for 
a 20-year life, as it works in concert with the Hubble and Spitzer space 
telescopes to answer fundamental questions about the cosmos.