File:NASA's Webb Draws Back Curtain on Universe's Early Galaxies (Single panel with inset 1) (52506381778).png

A long time ago… in galaxies far far away, the first stars were born in the early universe. But when and how? That’s a mystery Webb is one step closer to solving.

Using Webb, researchers have found two early galaxies that are unusually bright, one of which could contain the most distant starlight ever seen. The galaxies are thought to have existed 350 and 450 million years after the big bang (respectively, from top to bottom). Unlike our Milky Way, these first galaxies are small and compact, with spherical or disk shapes rather than grand spirals.

Webb’s new findings suggest that the galaxies would have had to begin coming together about 100 million years after the big bang — meaning that the first stars might have started forming in such galaxies around that time, much earlier than expected.

Follow-up observations with Webb’s spectrographs will confirm the distances of these primordial galaxies and help us learn more about the earliest stars. More: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-draws-back-...

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu (UCLA)

[Image description: Countless glowing galaxies of all shapes and sizes speckling the black backdrop of space. Some are spiral, some more disk-shaped and others spherical. Farther galaxies are only seen as dots. Their colors include blue, pink, orange, and white. Towards the center left, a red dot of a galaxy, along with some surrounding streaks, are framed in a tiny white box. This box is attached to a close-up view in a much larger inset box. The red dot is a never-before-seen galaxy discovered by Webb, thought to have existed 350 million years after the big bang.