If we remember 2022 for anything, and there’s a lot to choose from, why not remember it for the debut of the James Webb Space Telescope, whose images have forever changed the way we see the universe. Who can forget the realization that the first image from the JWST revealed not a field of hundreds of stars, but a field of hundreds of galaxies? Here’s more from Phys.Org:

Like the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST is in space, so it can take pictures with stunning detail free from the distortions of Earth’s atmosphere. …while Hubble is in orbit around Earth at an altitude of 540km, the JWST is 1.5 million kilometers distant, far beyond the moon. From this position, away from the interference of our planet’s reflected heat, it can collect light from across the universe far into the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This ability, when combined with the JWST’s larger mirror, state-of-the-art detectors, and many other technological advances, allows astronomers to look back to the universe’s earliest epochs.

See more!