Art Imitating Space Imitating Art

Thanks to NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, and art from around the world inspired by it, the Space Age has never looked better.

#UnfoldtheUniverse art — by Camilo Nascimento. (Image credit: Ora Buch, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope)

For those who haven’t been eagerly following its meteoric progress across the galaxy since 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space observatory.

Successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and is considered by many authorities to be the most complex and ambitious deep space telescope ever built.

Besides launching a new generation of starry-eyed STEM students and capturing the imagination of millions, the James Webb Space Telescope has inspired artists from around the world. From paintings to poetry, Webb’s wavelengths have proven an irresistible muse.

#UnfoldTheUniverse art — by Ionanna Gika.

Like the art it inspires, the JWST is designed to study the universe across a wide range of wavelengths, from the near-infrared to the mid-infrared, and is equipped with a suite of highly sensitive instruments and detectors that will allow it to make groundbreaking observations of distant galaxies, stars, and exoplanets.