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.

Being a relatively close neighbor to the Milky Way at 32 million light-years away, M74, otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy, is a popular target for astronomers.

Using the new powerful Webb Space Telescope, NASA and the European Space Agency provided a stunning look into the galaxy’s heart.

The ESA said that the galaxy’s lack of gas in its nuclear region provided an unobscured view of the nuclear star cluster at the galaxy’s center. Images also showed filaments of dust and gas in spiral arms around the galaxy.

Previous estimates have said that the galaxy contains 100 billion stars. Because of its orientation and relatively close distance, it is a top galaxy for astronomers to examine.

Although it’s a great galaxy for professionals to study, its magnitude makes it challenging for amateur astronomers to view.

The latest image is among several released by NASA and the ESA since the Webb Telescope began operating earlier this summer. The telescope has allowed scientists to examine galaxies up to 13.1 billion light-years away. The telescope’s spectrograph permits NASA to explore galaxies’ chemical composition.

The Webb telescope is replacing the Hubble telescope as NASA’s primary view of deep space.

NASA released the first set of images from the telescope on July 12.

We're about to have eyes on the invisible side of space.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the premier space observatory of the next decade when it launches Saturday. The telescope is expected to launch Saturday morning from French Guiana and live coverage will be available on NASA's website beginning at 6 a.m. ET.

In addition to investigating the wealth of planets outside of our solar system, the observatory will peer back to some of the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang and the very structure of the universe itself.

Webb will act as an infrared sleuth, detecting light that is invisible to us and revealing otherwise hidden regions of space.

The Webb telescope will look at every phase of cosmic history, including the first glows after the Big Bang that created our universe and the formation of the galaxies, stars and planets that fill it today. Its capabilities will enable the observatory to answer questions about our own solar system and investigate faint signals from the first galaxies formed 13.5 billion years ago.

"We can currently see galaxies back to 500 million to 600 million years post-Big Bang, nearly 13 billion years ago," said Marcia Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera on the Webb telescope.

So far, what scientists have observed from this time period looks similar to what we already understand.

"However, logic dictates that at some point during the first few hundred million years, these familiar-looking objects must have come from somewhere and evolved," Rieke said. "After all, galaxies don't spring up from nothing, virtually overnight."

The infrared camera on Webb could reveal the faint first light from galaxies as they formed during the infancy of the universe.

As the universe expands, these faraway galaxies are moving away from us so rapidly that their wavelengths of light become stretched out until the point that they are only faintly visible in infrared light, Rieke said.

Origins of the universe and how it evolved

With Webb's capabilities, researchers should be able to get four times closer to the Big Bang than the Hubble Space Telescope, she said. Hubble observed the universe 450 billion years after the Big Bang.

Marcia Rieke's husband George Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, is also working on Webb as the science team lead for the telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument. This instrument will allow Webb to look even farther across the infrared spectrum.

Each space telescope builds on the knowledge gained from the previous one. In the case of Webb, its mirror is nearly 60 times larger than previous space telescopes, including the retired Spitzer Space Telescope. The observatory also improves on the sensitivity and resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Collecting infrared observations from space prevents interference created by the heat from our planet and its atmosphere.

The spacecraft includes a five-layer sunshield that will unfurl to reach the size of a tennis court. It will protect Webb's giant mirror and instruments from the sun's heat because they need to be kept at a very frigid negative 370 degrees Fahrenheit to operate.

"This is really exciting that we're going to be looking at things that were just completely out of reach before," George Rieke said.

Key questions about the universe can be answered when scientists have access to data from different wavelengths of light.

"Excitement in astronomy in the last 70 years has been looking at different wavelengths," George Rieke said. "Before that, all astronomy was done in optical (visible light) and looking at the universe in optical is like going to the symphony concert and only listening to one note. Now, we've got the whole symphony."

Observations by Webb could confirm or entirely upend predictions and ideas that scientists have about the origin of the universe and how it evolved.

"We want to know, how did we get here from the Big Bang?" said John Mather, NASA's senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. "We want to look at those first galaxies growing. There are dark areas of dust skewing our view of those earliest times when the stars are growing, but we can see them with infrared."

Understanding why distant galaxies are so different from those closer to our own Milky Way galaxy would help fill a critical knowledge gap.

"We have this 13.8 billion year story of the universe, and we're missing a few key paragraphs in the very first chapter of the story," said Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist and Webb deputy project scientist for communications at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"What we're really trying to do here is is figure out how to pull those pieces of the story together and learn more about that whole process."