This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument shows Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos, about 4 hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made impact. The images show a tight, compact core, with plumes of material that appear as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place. The sharp points are Webb’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artifact of the telescope’s structure. The observations shown here were conducted in the filter F070W (0.7 microns) and assigned the color red.

These images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope show the first time the two telescopes have simultaneously observed the same target—Webb in the infrared, Hubble in visible light. These observations occurred several hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted Dimorphos. In both images, plumes of ejecta spread from the body of the asteroid, and the system is much brighter than recorded in observations before impact. Hubble observations were conducted in one filter, WFC3/UVIS F350LP (assigned the color blue), while Webb observed at F070W (0.7 microns, assigned the color red).