NASA shares spectacular 'teaser' image captured by its James Webb Space Telescope – ahead of the eagerly-awaited release of its first

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NASA has shared a 'teaser' image ahead of next week's eagerly-anticipated release of the first deep-space pictures from its James Webb Space Telescope.

The $10 billion (£7.4 billion) observatory was launched to look back in time to the dawn of the universe and to capture what happened just a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Its first science-quality pictures are due to be released to the public on July 12 but the US space agency has provided an engineering test photo as a little sneak preview.

The image is the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours and shows a set of distant stars and galaxies.

It has some 'rough-around-the-edges' qualities, NASA said in a statement, but is still 'among the deepest images of the universe ever taken', and offers a 'tantalising glimpse' at what will be revealed in the coming weeks, months, and years.

'When this image was taken, I was thrilled to clearly see all the detailed structure in these faint galaxies,' said Neil Rowlands, program scientist for Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor at Honeywell Aerospace.


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