Nasa administrator Bill Nelson, who in 1986 became the second sitting member of US Congress to fly in space, takes to the stage, saying: "It tells us something about Nasa's unmatched ingenuity, where we make the impossible, possible.

"It's not going to stop - this telescope has got fuel for 20 years."

He contnues: "People across this planet are going to see the images captured by this telescope and every image is a new discovery that will give a humanity a view of the universe we've never seen before."

He says the images will show the "formation of stars and devouring black holes".

He says the telescope will penetrate through the dust clouds and show light far across the corners of the universe.

Image source, NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI

Dennis Andrucykis, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, says the images we're about to see "will blow you away, they're so spectacular.

"Things I never even dreamed we'd be able to see are here before us," he says.

Andrucykis says the James Webb telescope has been two and a half decades in the making, adding that it has been the largest collective efforts in centres history.

"Many engineers and scientists have supported the James Webb Telescope," he says.

"While it's been an engineering marvel, it's about to become a scientific marvel."

A reminder that you can watch the Nasa live stream at the top of our page. Just click on the play button.

Image source, Reuters

We've been hearing from scientists and space enthusiasts about why these images are so important and why we should be excited about them. Among them is Brian May, the astrophysicist and Queen guitarist, who is also a long-time Nasa collaborator.

May abandoned his study of zodiacal light in the galaxy when Queen took off in the 1970s, but then returned in 2007 to complete his thesis and gain his doctorate at Imperial College.

He told us he was "thrilled" to see the first image, which captures light from galaxies that has taken 13 billion years to reach us, and that he "can't wait to see the other revelations" coming shortly.

May and fellow space science enthusiast and 10cc frontman Graham Gouldman are releasing a new song, Floating in Heaven, to celebrate the arrival of the James Webb images.

This is not the first time May has marked scientific discoveries with brand-new music. In 2019, he released New Horizons, external after Nasa announced its probe had reached the furthest object in our solar system ever visited by a spacecraft. In an interview at the time, May said the song was about “the indomitable spirit of man to explore the universe around him".

Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, .

Three decades we’ve been waiting. That’s how long it’s taken to design, build, launch and set up the most powerful space telescope ever conceived.

There were many times during those 30 years when we thought this day would never come; crunch moments when the project went so over-budget and fell so far behind its intended schedule that we fully expected the US Congress to scrap James Webb.

Thank heavens they stuck in there.

The first pictures from the new telescope, even just the test imagery collected by engineers during this past six months of set-up, have been nothing short of stunning.

In part it’s the incredible detail you can see in the pictures, thanks to Webb’s 6.5m-wide primary mirror and hi-fidelity infrared instruments.

But it’s also the speed at which Webb can work that is astonishing.

It can produce data in the frame of hours when it would have taken Hubble weeks to do the same thing.

I’m agog at what the future will bring.

The Nasa live stream has begun with a countdown displayed on screen, with the unveiling of the next full-colour images of the universe expected at 15:30 BST (10:30 EDT).

Speaking from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland in the US, Michelle Jones, communications chief, says "this is the day we've all been waiting for".

Nasa has been working for two decades to present the first science images from the James Webb Space Telescope, she says.

For the past six months the Webb team have worked tirelessly to get the telescope ready to present the images, she adds.

Dr Hannah Wakeford
Lecturer in Astrophysics, University of Bristol

These are the first images from a brand-new telescope that has been anticipated for over a decade.

What we are seeing is just a minor glimpse of images, science, knowledge yet to come.

The James Webb Space Telescope gives us a new perspective on the universe and we will be able to get new insights into the first galaxies, stars forming in dense nebulae, the atmospheres of alien exoplanets, and objects in our own solar system.

It will give us the ability to examine the atmospheres of smaller and cooler planets in an effort to find the Earth's place in the diversity of planets.

We're expecting more images from the early cosmos to be released shortly by Nasa.

Full-colour images from the James Webb Space Telescope will be revealed this afternoon, with a Nasa live stream, external starting around now and images expected from 15:30 BST (10:30 EDT).

We'll bring you the latest updates as we get them.

Image source, Nasa/Esa/Csa/Stsci

So you've seen the first amazing image - we'll get to see more later. We'll bring them to you when we get them.

In the meantime, we've asked the renowned physicist Prof Brian Cox what we can see in the first full-colour picture from the new James Webb Space Telescope.

He says it shows the “tiniest piece of sky” and there are thousands of galaxies visible.

And if you’re wondering just how tiny it is - he says the image zeroes in on the equivalent of “a piece of sky that you would cover if you took a grain of sand" and held it at arm's length.

Cox says virtually every one of the “dim smudges” or “spiralling shapes” is a galaxy of perhaps “100 billion, maybe up to a trillion stars”.

The light from the relatively nearby galaxies in the image “began its journey to us before the Earth had formed”, he says.

The “strange arcs” in the distance are “distorted images of distant galaxies” – galaxies formed “very close to the Big Bang” – and Cox says it has taken the light from those an incredible 13 billion years to reach us.

Image source, .

You might have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. It has had a huge impact on our understanding of the universe.

But scientists are very excited about the potential of the new Webb telescope, and what we might learn as it gazes deep into the Universe.

Emma Curtis-Lake, STFC Webb Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, said the first Webb image released on Monday was “truly beautiful”.

“Webb has unveiled whole galaxies that Hubble couldn’t see, shown details and underlying structure that were not visible in the Hubble images, and given us an incredible preview of what’s to come."

Hubble used to stare at the sky for weeks on end to produce this kind of result but Webb is able to produce rich images much more quickly.

"What Webb managed in 12 hours is really astounding compared to what Hubble managed in around 10 days," said Curtis-Lake. "And there’s so much more to come!”

The Hubble telescope’s successor has been named after Nasa’s James Edwin Webb.

Webb was Nasa’s second administrator and led the space agency during Apollo missions in the 1960s.

The Apollo space programme successfully landed humans on the Moon for the first time in 1969.

There has been some controversy around the naming of the telescope in tribute to Webb, who some scientists allege was involved in the persecution of gay and lesbian federal employees as part of US government policy in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Nasa has said it has found no evidence that warrants changing the name of the telescope.

Image source, NASA

Hello and thanks for joining our live coverage as new images from the early cosmos are released.

More stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope are going to be revealed later today.

But here’s what we’ve seen so far:

• The first full-colour picture from the new James Webb Space Telescope was released yesterday
• The image is said to be the deepest, most detailed infrared view of the Universe to date, containing the light from galaxies that has taken many billions of years to reach us
• US President Joe Biden was shown the image during a White House briefing yesterday and hailed a major breakthrough in science and astronomy

Image source, NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI