A James Webb Space Telescope study is setting the record straight on the ages of some known ancient galaxies, which have turned out to be much older and farther away in space than previously thought.
Webb, a joint observatory of NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts, took a fresh look at a piece of the sky made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope’s ultra-deep field view more than 20 years ago. At that time, Hubble’s long-exposure image was extremely ambitious: Scientists pointed the telescope at a seemingly starless area, unsure what photons they’d collect.
In the end, that ultra-deep field image was “found to be anything but blank,” Webb researchers said, “containing thousands of distant galaxies.”
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
