This week NASA released images from a new space telescope that has helped to expand our view of the universe.

Anton Koekemoer with the Space Telescope Science Institute helped to put together different exposures from the James Webb Space Telescope that were released Monday and Tuesday.

Watch the videos below to see him explain what we're seeing:

PHOTO 1:

The first photo that was released Monday shows a cluster of galaxies, Koekemoer said.

"These are all the white galaxies in the foreground of this image, and they are actually quite distant. As it is, on the day of, the light has been traveling from this cluster of galaxies for a few billion years," he said.

Koekemoer added that because the clusters are so massive, it’s sitting in what’s called a dark matter halo.

"It's even more massive than the light we can see. And all of this mass is actually bending the light from more distant galaxies behind it," he said.

PHOTO 2:

Koekemoer said another photo explains the atmospheric composition of a hot gas giant exoplanet that has the chemical signature for water molecules.

In this case, measurements provided by the Webb telescope showed the presence of steamy water vapors.

He explained how scientists look at the starlight that is blocked as the planet passes in front of the star for insights.

“As the light passes through the atmosphere, these steam molecules … absorb the light. So you see these dips in the spectrum that correspond to different molecular bands, basically of these water molecules.”

He said this is a “very difficult, challenging observation to make.”

PHOTO 3:

Koekemoer said another photo shows what happens when “unstable” stars are at the end of their life and gas expands away from the star.

“This whole ring of gas has basically been rejected by the star,” he said of the image.

PHOTO 4:

The Stephan’s Quintet group of galaxies are close together and gravitationally bound to each other, he said.

With Webb, you can see the outflow of gas from the black hole, he said.

“Up until now we’ve only been able to study this kind of process in the very local galaxies very close to our Milky Way,” he said. “Now we can begin to study this for distant black holes in the distant universe and try to understand how these black holes are formed, how the gas falls into them and how they grow.”

PHOTO 5:

Another image shows a cloud of gas in our Milky Way galaxy.

“This whole region is part of a much larger ring of star formation,” he said. “And we’re looking at a tiny piece of that.”

He said a star outside of the image is “lighting up this whole landscape.”

The orange and rust-colored gas are dense clouds of “very cold molecular gas and dust,” he said.

Video above: The James Webb Space Telescope provides ‘breathtaking’ new views of the Orion NebulaThe James Webb Space Telescope captured a highly detailed snapshot of the so-called Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that's speckled with newly formed stars.The area, which lies within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years from Earth, had previously been captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, creating an image deemed "iconic" by space observers.The fact that new stars are brewing within the eerie columns of cosmic dust and gas is what earned the area its name.The Webb telescope used its Near-Infrared Camera, also called NIRCam, to give astronomers a new, closer look at the region, glimpsing through some of the dusty plumes to reveal more infant stars that glow bright red."Newly formed protostars are the scene-stealers," reads a news release from the European Space Agency. "When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars."Since Hubble first imaged the area in the 1990s, astronomers have returned to the scene several times. The ESA William Herschel Telescope, for example, has also captured an image of the distinctive area of star birth, and Hubble created its own follow-up image in 2014. Each new instrument that sets its sights on the region gives researchers new insight, according to ESA."Along the edges of the pillars are wavy lines that look like lava. These are ejections from stars that are still forming. Young stars periodically shoot out jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust," according to a news release."This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water," it reads. "These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for millions of years."Webb is operated by NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. The $10 billion space observatory, launched last December, has enough fuel to continue snapping unprecedented images of the cosmos for about 20 years.Compared with the capabilities of other telescopes, the space observatory's powerful, massive mirror and infrared light technology can uncover faint, distant galaxies that are otherwise invisible — and Webb has the potential to enhance our understanding of the origins of the universe.Some of Webb's first images, which have been rolling out since July, have highlighted the observatory's capabilities to reveal previously unseen aspects of the cosmos, like star birth shrouded in dust.However, astronomers are also using the telescope's stable and precise image quality to illuminate our own solar system, and so far it has taken images of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune.