Take a Look at the Most Detailed Photos Yet of Our Distant Universe!

The James Webb Space Telescope captured the sharpest infrared image of a galaxy cluster, offering the most detailed view of our universe yet in its early years, helping astrophysicists and researchers further their understanding and knowledge of our world’s origin.

The image – dubbed Webb’s First Deep Field – is of SMACS 0723, a galaxy structure no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm’s length, revealing our universe as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The cluster’s powerful gravitational field can bend the light rays from distant galaxies behind it, acting as a magnifying glass that warps and bend images.

Taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, the picture is a composite of images at different wavelengths taken over 12.5 hours and reveals thousands of galaxies. The light from these galaxies took billions of years to reach us, so it is as if we were looking back in time just one billion years after the 13.8-billion-year-old big bang. The next step is for researchers to identify the age, mass, history, and composition of the galaxies comprised within the cluster. For constellation lovers: SMACS 0723 is observable in the southern sky near the constellation Volans.