Space

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2408a/

[Image description: A face-on spiral galaxy with four spiral arms that curve outward in a counterclockwise direction. The spiral arms are filled with young, blue stars and peppered with purplish star-forming regions that appear as small blobs. The middle of the galaxy is much brighter and more yellowish, and has a distinct narrow linear bar angled from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. Dozens of red background galaxies are scattered across the image. The background of space is black

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2407d/

[Image description: At the centre of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is composed of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the centre-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the centre of the bubble there is an opaque blue glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disc-shaped galaxies scattered about the image.]

This is a part of a Rocket Engineer's ongoing series of live reviews on various Space missions, mostly NASA

Full disclosure: He does acknowledge that the most likely explanation is that it's not aliens.

"Misinterpretation is obviously the most boring on that list, which perhaps means it's the most likely to be the case. ... No one's ever actually put this stuff in a 10,000-Kelvin oven and measured how they absorb light. So the characteristic frequencies are theoretical, and it's quite possible that they are slightly wrong, and instead of seeing radioactive elements, we are instead seeing a far more mundane set of elements just behaving in an unexpected way."

https://esawebb.org/images/WR140a/

[Image Description: The background of this Webb image of star Wolf-Rayet 140 is black. A pair of bright stars dominates the center of the image, with at least 17 pink-orange concentric dust rings emanating from them. Throughout the scene are a range of distant galaxies, the majority of which are very tiny and red, appearing as splotches.]

Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) met, compressing the gas and forming dust. The stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years; like the rings of a tree’s trunk, the dust loops mark the passage of time.

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2306a/

[Image Description: A large, face-on spiral galaxy. The core is radiating very brightly. Streaks of dust glow intensely red, in the centre and across most of the galaxy. This gas is surrounded by a dark grey halo made of the galaxy’s stars. The halo stretches out into a tidal tail at the upper-left, and another at the bottom. Small stars and galaxies surround the spiral galaxy, on a black background.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2322a/

[Image description: At the centre is a thin horizontal multi-coloured cloud tilted from bottom left to top right. At its centre is a dark brown cloud from which both outflows are spewing from. These outflows transition from colours of yellow/orange, to a light blue region, with prominent light pink features in the outer regions.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2319a/

[Image description: At the centre is a thin horizontal orange cloud tilted from bottom left to top right. It takes up about two-thirds of the length of this angle, but is thin at the opposite angle. At its centre is a set of very large red and pink diffraction spikes in Webb’s familiar eight-pointed pattern. It has a central yellow-white blob, which hides two tightly orbiting stars. The background is filled with stars and galaxies.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2316a/

[Image description: Red dual opposing jets coming from young stars fill the darker top half of the image, while a glowing pale-yellow, cave-like structure is bottom centre, tilted toward two o’clock, with a bright star at its centre. The dust of the cave structure becomes wispy toward eight o’clock. Above the arched top of the dust cave three groupings of stars with diffraction spikes are arranged. A dark cloud sits at the top of the arch of the glowing dust cave, with one streamer curling down the right-hand side. The dark shadow of the cloud appears pinched in the centre, with light emerging in a triangle shape above and below the pinch, revealing the presence of a star inside the dark cloud. The image’s largest jets of red material emanate from within this dark cloud, thick and displaying structure like the rough face of a cliff, glowing brighter at the edges. At the top centre of the image, a star displays another, larger pinched dark shadow, this time vertically. To the left of this star is a more wispy, indistinct region.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2307a/

[Image Description: A large, bright star shines from the centre with smaller stars scattered throughout the image. A clumpy cloud of material surrounds the central star, with more material above and below than on the sides, in some places allowing background stars to peek through. The cloud material is yellow closer to the star.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2301d/

[Image Description: A large, dark cloud is contained within the frame. In its top half it is textured like smoke and has wispy gaps, while at the bottom and at the sides it fades gradually out of view. On the left are several orange stars: three each with six large spikes, and one behind the cloud which colours it pale blue and orange. Many tiny stars are visible, and the background is black.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2303a/

[Image description: The two galaxies swirl into a single chaotic object in the centre. Long, blue spiral arms stretch vertically, faint at the edges. Hot gas spreads horizontally over that, mainly bright red with many small gold spots of star formation. The core of the merging galaxies is very bright and radiates eight large, golden diffraction spikes. The background is black, with many tiny galaxies in orange and blue.]

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2210a/

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2208a/

150 MB Fullsize Original

[Image Description: A close-up view of a barred spiral galaxy. Two spiral arms reach horizontally away from the core in the centre, merging into a broad network of gas and dust which fills the image. This material glows brightest orange along the path of the arms, and is darker red across the rest of the galaxy. Through many gaps in the dust, countless tiny stars can be seen, most densely around the core.]

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2310a/

[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s centre, but it is tightly limited to the core. The rings feature colours of deep red and orange and highlight filaments of dust around cavernous black bubbles.]

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2308a/

[Image description: A close-in image of a spiral galaxy, showing its core and part of a spiral arm. Thousands upon thousands of tiny stars that make it up can be seen, most dense in a whitish bar that forms its core. Clumps and filaments of dust form an almost skeletal structure that follows the twist of the galaxy and its spiral arm. Large, glowing bubbles of red gas are hidden in the dust.]

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2305a/