When NASA successfully crashed into an asteroid, these famous telescopes captured the effects

NASA’s DART mission of crashing into an asteroid was a success, but viewers were unable to see the aftermath of the impact because the last thing the spacecraft saw was an extreme close up of the asteroid, Dimorphos.

Luckily, two famous telescopes witnessed the event and captured the aftermath of the historic collision, as NASA says the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope did their first ever observations of the same celestial target Monday evening.

“For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was impacted by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together.”

The James Webb Telescope has taken several dazzling photos of our solar system and universe with its near-infrared camera, but trying to capture Dimorphos was a challenge because of its speed across space. The team working on the telescope was able give it a better tracking method to capture the asteroid.

The telescope was able to take observations before the collision and several shots afterwards, showing “plumes of material” streaming away from the center of the asteroid.