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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted the earliest-known galaxy, one that is surprisingly bright and big considering it formed during the universe’s infancy — at only 2% its current age.
The telescope has revolutionised the understanding of the early universe since becoming operational in 2022.
The new discovery was made by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) research team.
JADES-GS-z14-0
This galaxy, called JADES-GS-z14-0, measures about 1,700 light years across.
It has a mass equivalent to 500 million stars the size of our Sun and was rapidly forming new stars, about 20 every year.
By peering across vast cosmic distances, JWST is looking way back in time, observed the galaxy as it existed about 290 million years after the Big Bang event that initiated the universe roughly 13.8 billion years ago, the researchers said.
This period spanning the universe’s first few hundred million years is called cosmic dawn.
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