...but I can't stop staring at it.
The six pointed things are stars.
Every other dot or streak in that image is a galaxy. Don't try to rub the smudge near the center from your screen.
That smudge is caused by gravitational lensing. We are literally looking at gravitational lensing, which was theoretical not all that long ago.
The image is a test image. Remember the first Hubble Deep Field image? This is the same part of the sky, which is intentional.
It's 4.6 billion years old. This is fossil light. This is the universe as it was. Makes me wonder how many civilizations rose and fell before we even left our oceans.
Note that this image is all in the infrared, hence why everything is red and orange. It's been digitally processed to fall within the human visual range.
More images will be released in an hour or so. This is it.
The JWST is ready to do science.
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