The near-infrared JWST view (with NIRCam) of the Ring Nebula showcases tendril-like filaments emerging from the main ring, a thin series of concentric shells outside the main ring, and wispy, knotty globules on the interior of the main ring: approximately 20,000 of them. The nebula is very hydrogen-rich, with carbon-based molecules appearing in a thin ring. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow, N. Cox, R. Wesson)

The top 15 JWST images of 2023

The Universe is an amazing place. Under the incredible, infrared gaze of JWST, it’s coming into focus better than ever before.

Although it might seem that the world changed long ago from the Hubble era to the JWST era, the reality is that humanity’s greatest space-based observatory of all-time is less than two years old. It launched on Christmas Day, 2021, and required six months of deployment, commissioning, and calibration operations before it was ready to begin the primary phase of its life: full-time science operations. Since those milestones were achieved in July of 2022, JWST has been our cosmic workhorse, revealing the Universe in a whole new light, with unprecedented resolution and wavelength coverage to view the cosmos.

While its first sets of spectacular images were released during 2022, this past year, 2023, represents the very first year that we had this remarkable observatory operating full-time, surveying the Universe near and far to reveal some of the most incredible views, plus many unexpected scientific discoveries, that pretty much no one could have anticipated. Here, without further ado, are my favorite JWST science images released in 2023.