Every dot in this Webb telescope picture is a galaxy. Can you count them?
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to marvel scientists and ordinary citizens alike as it reveals the intricate design of the universe and unravels never-before-seen cosmic phenomena.Its latest image shows thousands of galaxies packed together in clusters.The European Space Agency (ESA) said that these galaxies glow with white-gold light. "We see this galaxy group as it appeared when the Universe was 6.5 billion years old, a little less than half the Universe's current age," ESA added.
n area of deep space with thousands of galaxies in various shapes and sizes on a black background. (Photo: ESA)
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The patch of the sky scanned by the Webb Telescope containing thousands of these galaxies is called the COSMOS-Web field, where Cosmos stands for Cosmic Evolution Survey that has been done by a group of telescopes including the Hubble and the XMM-Newton space observatory.The survey aims to understand how massive structures like galaxy clusters came to be. More than half of the galaxies in our Universe belong to galaxy groups like the one pictured here. COSMOS-Web is a 255-hour Webb Treasury programme that maps 0.54 square degrees, a little more than two-and-a-half times the area covered by three full moons, of the COSMOS field using four NIRCam filters."Studying galaxy groups is critical for understanding how individual galaxies link up to form galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the Universe. Belonging to a galaxy group can also alter the course of a galaxy's evolution through mergers and gravitational interactions," ESA added in a statement.
These galaxies glow with white-gold light as seen by the Webb Telescope. (Photo: Nasa)
advertisementThe image combines data from Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) instrument with further infrared observations from Hubble telescope.Webb's infrared capabilities and sensitive instruments have pushed the search for galaxy groups farther back into cosmic history, revealing galaxy groups as far back as when the Universe was only 1.9 billion years old – just 14% of its current age.
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