Twenty seconds was enough to move the numbers. In a two-part psychology study with 113 participants, people who looked at sets of James Webb Space Telescope deep-space images and ordinary star-filled night skies reported more awe than when they looked at urban scenes with no obvious greenery or water. The rise showed up in both a small face-to-face pilot and a larger online study, which gave the result a useful repeat check across two settings.
The paper, published in the International Journal of Psychology, matters because it asks a very modern question: what happens when people meet space through screens rather than through a telescope, a planetarium, or a trip outdoors? The study by Jason P Martens, Mia Prokopetz and Kit Tomlinson of Capilano University suggests that the answer is not just simple liking. The strongest shifts were tied to awe, especially the sense of standing before something immense and the feeling that the scene pushes the mind beyond easy understanding.
Those details are important because the same study found a narrower result for mood. Positive feelings rose in the larger online sample, but negative emotion did not increase in either part of the work. The short version is straightforward: deep-space pictures looked good to participants, felt mentally refreshing and made them feel small in a meaningful way, yet they did not make people more distressed than city images during this brief viewing task.
How the 20-second test worked
The design was simple enough for non-specialists to follow, which is one reason the result is easy to trust within its limits. Participants saw three kinds of image sets: urban scenes, naked-eye star scenes and deep-space scenes drawn from Webb photography. Each set contained seven pictures and each picture stayed on screen for 20 seconds. After a full set, people rated what they had just seen before moving on to the next condition.
One strength of the design is that the same people rated all three categories. That reduces the chance that one condition looks better merely because one group happened to be more emotional or more interested in astronomy than another group. The pilot involved 14 people in a darkened room facing a large screen, while the online study added 99 more participants who completed the same sequence through a survey. Together, those samples created the 113-person total highlighted in the headline.
The researchers did more than ask whether people liked the pictures. They used the awe experience scale, a multi-part measure that breaks awe into several pieces, then added standard positive and negative affect questions. They also asked about pleasantness, restoration and whether someone would want such images in their room. If readers want the formal record, the article links out to the journal paper, which gives the full method and statistics.
Why awe rose so strongly
The clearest result sat in the awe ratings. In the pilot study, overall awe differed significantly across urban, space and stars conditions, with an F statistic of 13.68 and a partial eta squared of 0.51. In the 99-person online study, the effect was even more convincing statistically, with overall awe at F(2, 188) = 70.88 and partial eta squared = 0.43. Those values describe a large separation among conditions in this experiment and the direction consistently favored the darker sky conditions over urban scenes.
Two parts of awe stood out most: vastness and accommodation. Vastness covers the feeling of being in the presence of something great in scale. Accommodation refers to the mental strain of taking in something hard to fit into ordinary categories. Deep-space images scored especially well on both, which fits the intuitive experience many people report when they first see Webb’s glowing arcs, crowded galaxies and distant structures. NASA’s page for Webb’s deep field shows the kind of imagery participants were reacting to, full of distorted background galaxies and lensing effects that are visually rich even before anyone explains the astrophysics.
The pattern also helps separate awe from simple cheerfulness. A city skyline can be visually busy, yet it rarely signals the same scale as a field packed with galaxies whose light traveled for billions of years. ESA’s Webb release described the first deep field as a tiny patch of sky revealing thousands of galaxies, some seen less than a billion years after the big bang. When viewers meet that kind of image, the psychological effect appears to come less from excitement alone and more from the collision between beauty, scale and difficulty of comprehension.
Restoration rose too, but stars had an edge
The study did not stop with awe. Participants also rated the images as more pleasant than urban pictures, more suitable for mental restoration and more worth hanging in a room. In the face-to-face pilot, all three measures reached significance. The online sample repeated that pattern with stronger statistical support: pleasantness at F(2, 184) = 47.54, restoration at F(2, 162) = 22.81 and willingness to hang the images at F(2, 156) = 19.66, all with p values below 0.001.
One subtle point makes the result more interesting than a simple “space wins” story. Deep-space pictures often scored higher than stars on awe-related measures, yet starry night images were judged the most restorative. That suggests that psychological refreshment and awe are related but not identical. A sky full of visible stars may be easier for the mind to settle into, while deep space images can press harder on the sense of scale and mystery. The authors interpret that contrast through the idea that some natural scenes offer a softer kind of attention, while others demand more mental work.
There is a practical human point here. People may reach for different kinds of imagery depending on what they want from the experience. If the goal is wonder, Webb’s most dramatic views may do more work. If the goal is calm mental reset, a simpler night sky may sometimes serve better. Webb’s public galleries of first images help explain why both responses can coexist: some frames are dense and challenging, while others invite slower looking even before a reader knows what every feature means.
What the result does and does not mean
The moderation findings add another layer, though they are more limited than the headline result. People with a stronger night sky connection index score tended to report more awe and more positive affect overall. They also rated space and star imagery as more restorative and were more willing to hang it in their room. Fear of the dark showed a narrower pattern. Higher fear was linked to both higher positive affect and higher negative affect in general, but it did not rewrite the main result that space and stars outperformed urban scenes on awe.
Readers should stay close to what the experiment actually tested. The study measured brief reactions to photo sets, not long-term mental health changes, not spiritual transformation and not what happens when someone spends an evening under a real sky away from city light. The authors also note limits in the emotions measured, since they focused on awe plus broad positive and negative affect rather than a wider map of feelings. The pilot sample was small and the larger online study, while much stronger, still does not represent every population equally.
Even with those caveats, the work makes one point with unusual clarity. Space imagery can influence people in a distinctive psychological direction that goes beyond generic visual appeal. For these participants, looking at the cosmos briefly was associated with greater awe, stronger feelings of scale and a sense of restoration compared with urban images, while negative emotion stayed flat. That combination helps explain why modern telescope pictures spread so quickly through news, classrooms and personal screens: they give people a short encounter with something that feels bigger than ordinary life without requiring them to leave the room.
