1.5TB of Webb Telescope Data Made Available for Public Use

Open science just got a stellar upgrade. On Thursday, NASA-backed COSMOS-Web made 1.5 terabytes of the James Webb Space Telescope's observational data available online, free of charge. It's the biggest trove of raw deep-space data ever opened to the public at a given time.

COSMOS-Web, the Webb telescope's continuation of Hubble's 590-orbit Cosmic Evolution Survey, involves more than 200 researchers from a dozen countries. The project aims to expand astronomers' understanding of the Reionization Era (the billion years immediately following the Big Bang), track the evolution of massive galaxies in the universe's first two billion years, and unravel dark matter's entanglement with visible matter within galaxies.

Between Webb's 2021 launch and June 2025, COSMOS-Web has conducted over 250 hours of observations across 150 visits. The result is a vast raw data catalog containing "photometry, structural measurements, redshifts, and physical parameters for nearly ...