Watch | NASA's Webb captures thousands of galaxies including one never seen before

 

Credits: Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

NASA has shared a 3D visualization that portrays about 5,000 galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope as part of the CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) Survey. The video begins with nearby galaxies and ends with less-developed galaxies in the very distant universe, including one never seen before.

The CEERS survey gathered data from a region known as the Extended Groth Strip that lies between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations. This vast region, previously observed by the Hubble Space Telescope, contains about 100,000 galaxies, the 3D visualization focuses on approximately 5,000 - with the nearest and more complex galaxies located within a few billion light-years of Earth.

The farthest object in this visualization, known as Maisie's Galaxy, formed about 390 million years after the big bang, or about 13.4 billion years ago. In addition to being one of the first bright, extremely distant galaxies found by Webb, Maisie's Galaxy is also an example of an early galaxy that only this powerful observatory could see.

"We couldn't study galaxies like Maisie's before because we couldn't see them. Now, not only are we able to find them in our images, we're able to find out what they're made of and if they differ from the galaxies that we see close by," says Rebecca Larson of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, one of the survey's investigators.

The researchers now plan to learn about star formation in these early galaxies.

"Are these galaxies forming more stars than expected? Are the stars they're making more massive than we expect? These data have given us the information to ask these questions. Now, we need more data to get those answers," stated Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin, principal investigator of the CEERS program.

Slip away across the universe and fly through thousands of galaxies, captured by Webb as part of the CEERS Survey. We end at “Maisie's Galaxy,” a faint and distant infrared object, which existed only 390 million years after the big bang: https://t.co/V1MZQGSS7t pic.twitter.com/IRqungk3MC

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 10, 2023