The first few images from the JWST are of course very impressive and astonishing.

But to a member of the general public with no particular interest in astronomy, they might be underwhelming.

Does the JWST deep field look much different from the Hubble
deep field? A bunch of stars and galaxies. That they're much further
away, and yet the image didn't take nearly as long to make... isn't obvious from looking at it.

Or the images of the Southern Ring nebula. We've seen images of
nebulas before - even if we've never seen _this particular_ nebula
as close-up as this. Similarly with Stephan's Quintet; we've seen images
of galaxies before - even if we've never seen _these particular_
galaxies as close-up as this.

Of course, if people don't care at all about space and astronomy, no
images from the JWST are going to impress them, it could be argued.

But I think that there's a category of image that the JWST is capable of producing that will be... impressive to a greater degree, and impressive
to a larger class of people.

What can the JWST show us that we've _obviously_ never seen before?

Well, even the very closest galaxies are quite far away. So we have only
seen other galaxies with up to a certain maximum amount of detail.
As an example of that, one might take the images of the Whirlpool
Galaxy, M51, made by Hubble.

Now turn the JWST loose on M51. That would produce images of
another galaxy like we've never seen another galaxy before. There's
something that would be _obviously_ spectacular in a different kind
of way. That's how you convince the taxpayer in the street that he's
got his money's worth!

John Savard

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