One image showed thousands of distant galaxies, nebula that look like a beautiful painting, and awe-inspiring views of the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter.

Some of the biggest successes of James Webb is not in some of the images at all. It has been the detailed, amazing measurements of exoplanets - planets around other stars.

James Webb has started to directly take images of exoplanets, and detect and measure what's in the atmosphere of these stars. And until JWST, that has been really hard to do.

Most planets are found using the transit technique, which JWST can do as well. By staring at a star with a telescope, you wait for the planet to move in front of it. As it does, the brightness of the star fades or dims - a lot like a solar eclipse when the moon passes in front of the sun as viewed from Earth.

Over 5000 exoplanets have been discovered thus far. We believe nearly every star in our Milky Way has at least one planet on average. We already know of some stars that have five, six and even seven planets, much like our own solar system which has eight.

The first exoplanet was only discovered in 1992. However, it was a bit of a surprise as it was orbiting a pulsar called PSR B1257+12. Then in 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz found an exoplanet orbiting around a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi.

Now we know exoplanets are very common. If there are 300 billion stars in our Milky Way, and they all have planets, there are literally trillions of planets still waiting to be found.

But what are they like? Do they have atmospheres? And if so, what's in it? Could it support life? This is what JWST is trying to answer - and already doing.

James Webb breaks up the colours of light into their individual colours, called spectroscopy. Every element or molecule has a colour signature - much like DNA or a fingerprint. However, to do so, you need to collect lots of light, meaning a big telescope, and ideally in the infrared to see the element and molecules most interesting for atmospheres. Cue the James Webb Space Telescope.

In the first batch of data that James Webb released, it showed a planet that was very hot and had a lot of H20 in its atmosphere - almost like a steam planet.

Now it has shown a planet with lots of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. Given two planets in our solar system - Mars and Venus - have lots of carbon dioxide, it is a big step in understanding what other planets are like, and whether they could support life.

It has also taken a direct image of an exoplanet. Much like we can look up in the night sky and see Jupiter or Venus, James Webb can now see planets, in this case a gas giant like Jupiter, around a distant star.

Our place in the universe is rapidly changing thanks to JWST.