The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the faintest galaxy ever seen, burning away the pitch-black gloom of the early universe 13 billion years ago.
The James Webb Space Telescope has identified one of the most distant galaxies ever seen — an ancient, nearly invisible star cluster so remote that its light is the faintest scientists have ever detected.
Twinkling from within the Sculptor constellation in the southern sky, JD1's light left its source when the universe was just 4% of its current age. The light crossed dissipating gas clouds and boundless space before passing through the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, whose space-time-warping gravitational pull acted as a giant magnifying lens to steer the ancient galaxy into focus for the JWST.
Astronomers have observed evidence for reionization in many places: the dimming of brightly flaring quasars ; the scattering of light from electrons in the cosmic microwave background; and the infrequent, dim light given off by hydrogen clouds. Yet because the first galaxies used so much of their light to dissipate the stifling hydrogen mist, what they actually looked like has long remained a mystery to astronomers.
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