The Best View of the Distant Universe Ever Captured Shows Galaxies From Over 13 Billion Years Ago

In July 2022, NASA released a new image of the universe that instantly stood out. It wasn’t because of bright colors or dramatic shapes, though those were there too. What made it different was how far back in time it let us look. This was the first deep field taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and it showed thousands of galaxies in a part of the sky so small it could be covered by a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

The image was made using Webb’s near-infrared camera, called NIRCam, which is designed to detect light that has been stretched over billions of years. Some of the light in the image began its journey not long after the Big Bang, meaning we’re seeing galaxies as they looked more than 13 billion years ago. Because the universe is expanding, that light has shifted into the infrared part of the spectrum. Webb was built specifically to detect that kind of light.

The patch of sky in this image is located in the direction of the constellation Volans in the southern sky. It’s centered on a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723. This cluster is relatively close in cosmic terms, about 4.6 billion light-years from Earth, and acts like a magnifying glass. Its gravity bends the light coming from galaxies behind it, stretching and magnifying them in a process called gravitational lensing. As a result, Webb could pick up even fainter and more distant galaxies that would otherwise be invisible.

What’s especially striking about the image is how dense it is with structure. There are spiral galaxies, fuzzy blobs, reddish arcs, and tiny points of light, all scattered across a black background. Some of those arcs are actually galaxies that have been distorted by gravitational lensing. Others are so far away that they appear as faint red smudges, even after hours of exposure.

To create the image, Webb observed the patch of sky for about 12.5 hours. For comparison, Hubble’s deepest images took several days to achieve similar depth, and even then, they couldn’t reach the same level of detail in the infrared. Webb’s larger mirror and its ability to observe longer wavelengths give it a major advantage when it comes to seeing early galaxies.

The data from this one image has already been used to study the chemical composition of some of the galaxies, thanks to another instrument on board called NIRSpec. Scientists can break down the light into its components, much like a prism does, to find out what elements are present and how far away the galaxies are. This helps researchers figure out how quickly stars formed in the early universe and what those galaxies were made of.

This image isn’t just a deep look into space. It’s also a way to better understand time. Because light takes time to travel, every point in this photo represents a different moment in the universe’s history. Some galaxies are much closer and look more like what we see today. Others are so old that they may have stopped existing billions of years ago. But their light is only now reaching us.

The release of Webb’s first deep field was more than a scientific event. It was a moment that gave people a fresh sense of what it means to look far away and far back. For astronomers, it opened new questions about how galaxies formed, how fast the universe expanded in its early years, and what might still be hidden beyond even Webb’s reach.