Buckle up for an extraordinary journey through space, past thousands of galaxies, and at an astonishing speed of 200 million light years per second. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has recently unveiled a captivating 3D flight through the Extended Groth Strip, a region between the constellations Ursa Major and Boötes, showcasing the universe’s distant past and unveiling hidden cosmic wonders.

The Extended Groth Strip is teeming with at least 100,000 known galaxies, spread across more than 13 billion light years of space. In this virtual tour, we traverse approximately 5,000 galaxies, heading towards the distant reddish galaxy named Maisie’s Galaxy. The light from Maisie’s Galaxy began its journey to Earth just 390 million years after the Big Bang, offering a glimpse into our universe’s earliest epochs.

Every second of this intergalactic journey propels us 200 million light years farther from home. Initially, the passing galaxies appear quite similar to our own Milky Way, boasting intricate spirals in shades of yellow, white, and blue, adorned with various tilts and angles. However, as we delve deeper into space, we simultaneously travel back in time.

The nature of space and light plays a fascinating role in this celestial odyssey. As light travels across space, it captures a snapshot of distant galaxies as they appeared in the past. Moreover, the expansion of the universe causes galaxies to move away from us, stretching their light into longer wavelengths. Consequently, the galaxies around us gradually appear redder, smaller, and less complex, resembling their ancient forms from billions of years ago.

As we near the journey’s end, we encounter galaxies whose light extends into infrared wavelengths, invisible to our eyes but detectable by JWST. At last, we reach Maisie’s Galaxy, a mesmerizing sight frozen in time 13.4 billion years ago, just half a billion years after the universe’s birth.

JWST’s unparalleled capabilities, surpassing those of the Hubble Space Telescope, enable us to explore the cosmos in unprecedented detail. By peering deeper into the infrared spectrum with superior resolution, JWST reveals a multitude of galaxies previously unseen, challenging existing astrophysical predictions.

Rochester Institute of Technology astrophysicist Rebecca Larson emphasizes the significance of JWST’s discoveries, stating, “Now, not only are we able to find [galaxies like Maisie’s Galaxy] in our images, we’re able to find out what they’re made of and if they differ from galaxies that we see close by.”

For University of Texas astronomer Steven Finkelstein, principal investigator of the CEERS program that gathered the 3D journey data, the next frontier is studying how stars formed in these early galaxies. JWST’s advanced capabilities hold the potential to shed light on the intriguing history of star formation, uncovering the secrets of the universe’s earliest days.

By Impact Lab