[dwringer]

JWST is undeniably a superior and remarkable instrument, but there has been a bit of a trend I have noticed on social media - and this may just be my perception rather than reality - of comparing it with suboptimal alternatives rather than the best image we had prior to the JWST, often making the new images look dramatically better when in fact the improvements to the best images we already had are more subtle (perhaps because they are particularly subtle on low res article thumbnails and mobile devices?)

[itishappy]

I doubt it's anything nefarious. I think it's due to choosing comparisons based on popularity vs content.

Hubble's visible light Pillars of Creation image, for example, is super famous and instantly recognizable, but I'm not sure I would have known what I was looking at if the infrared version was used.

Also, different devices rarely have exactly the same usage and specifications. For example, Webb and Hubble have very different wavelength sensitivities, and this has tradeoffs in resolution and quality. In other words, the subjective image quality you get from the pictures may not tell the whole story of how valuable the data itself is.

[mlindner]

Well some of that is because JWST's images are actually lower resolution than Hubble in many cases (depending on the wavelength). Though at wavelengths they both operate in, Webb's will of course be much higher resolution.