NASA has released a 3D visualisation of a 390-million light year journey of its James Webb Space Telescope and the result is astounding.
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At just over a minute, the video portrays about 5000 galaxies within a small portion of the telescope's survey range.
As the camera soars from the Milky Way Galaxy, each second amounts to travelling 200 million years further into the past.
The visualisation ends at Maisie's Galaxy, which formed only 390 million years after the big bang or about 13.4 billion years ago.
This discovery is of great interest to astronomers as it's a galaxy that only James Webb could see.
That's because the telescope's instruments could capture the light from these early galaxies that has been shifted to infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe.
Astronomical Society of Australia secretary professor John O'Byrne said this was an exciting time for astronomy.
"The big difference between now and 20 years ago with looking at the distant universe is that we have lots of data via these telescopes where we previously didn't," he said.
"In the last few decades so much information is flooding in and that keeps the theoreticians honest".
Professor O'Byrne said the extreme distance of Maisie's Galaxy from the Milky Way was "pushing the envelope" on what was considered possible.
"Maisie's Galaxy formed only 390 million years after the big bang. That's very early," he said.
"But it's not to say there aren't any number of others out there, just waiting to be seen as well."
Rochester Institute of Technology's Rebecca Larson said this observation opened up a whole new period of history to researchers.
"We couldn't study galaxies like Maisie's before because we couldn't see them," she said.
"Now, not only are we able to find them in our images, we're able to find out what they're made of and if they differ from the galaxies that we see close by."
University of Texas' Steven Finkelstein said the new observations had exceeded all expectations.
"The sheer number of galaxies that we're finding in the early universe is at the upper end of all predictions," he said.
"Are these galaxies forming more stars than expected? Are the stars they're making more massive than we expect? These data have given us the information to ask these questions. Now, we need more data to get those answers."
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Aaron Smith
Regional council reporter and videographer at The Examiner. Contact me at aaron.smith@austcommunitymedia.com.au for enquiries or send me a message on social media.
Regional council reporter and videographer at The Examiner. Contact me at aaron.smith@austcommunitymedia.com.au for enquiries or send me a message on social media.
