President Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 during a White House event Monday, July 11. This image is the first deep field image from the new Webb Space Telescope, an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. The full array of first images get released Tuesday, July 12. For those of us who love and follow Jesus, this provides us a deeper understanding of the “Heavens declare the glory of God.”

What Is Significant about This Image?

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

Whereas the Hubble Space Telescope orbits the earth at 570 km, the Webb Space Telescope will orbit the earth in a fixed position with the sun at 1.5 million km. In this orbit with a fixed position, with a sunshield the size of a tennis court, Webb will remain both a cooler temperature which the infrared telescope needs to operate correctly and will have little of the sun’s or moon’s light interference.

A great translation of Psalm 19 reads:

The heavens declare the glory of God. Day after day the sun declares God’s glory. Night after night the vase universe reveals God’s greatness.

The text note of the NET: “it [i.e., the sky] declares knowledge,” i.e., knowledge about God’s royal majesty and power (see v. 1). This apparently refers to the splendor and movements of the stars. The imperfect verbal forms in v. 2, like the participles in the preceding verse, combine with the temporal phrases (“day after day” and “night after night”) to emphasize the ongoing testimony of the sky.

In other words, what we see at night shouts the glory of God.

I hope you did not miss this detail above – to understand the scope of the image released, it is like standing on the ground with an outstretched arm with a piece of sand on your finger as you look at the sky. This is just one little spot in the vast universe.

Deeper Understanding of the Glory of God

The Webb Space Telescope lets us see deeper into the universe. Just in one image, the NASA scientists tell us thousands of galaxies appeared. Since the final adjustment to the Hubble telescope in 2009, scientists have learned so much more about our universe. With the Webb, the process of discovering our universe is just beginning.

The scientists’ goals are to see light emitted from what they call the early universe. They believe they will see light from the early universe from 13.5 billion years ago. It gets them closer to their Big Bang. NASA writes, “Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries to help us understand our cosmic origins, seeking to answer age-old questions: How did the universe begin? How do galaxies form and evolve? How do we fit in the cosmos?”

However, with our biblical worldview, we understand that when God created the heavens and the earth some 6,000 years ago, He created the universe with age. Everything in the universe came into existence in six days. Adam and Eve were created with age. Just as we see with Adam and Eve, the same is true with the rest of the universe. On day one, everything had age.

Therefore, as you see the released pictures, the first immediately below this paragraph, take a moment to hear the heavens declare the glory of God. We knew we heard a lot of galaxies declaring the glory of God just as Psalm 19 tells us. These new pictures help us hear them better and louder. We “see” deeper which means the glory of God simply gets louder. Enjoy the chorus!

Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723

Image of the Webb Space Telescope