Webb Surprises Astronomers with Never-Before-Seen Details of the Early Universe

The massive gravity of galaxy cluster MACS0647 acts as a cosmic lens to bend and magnify light from the more distant MACS0647-JD system. It also triply lensed the JD system, causing its image to appear in three separate locations. These images, which are highlighted with white boxes, are marked JD1, JD2, and JD3. MACS0647-JD has a redshift of about 11, which puts it in the first 400 million years after the Big Bang. The long, diagonal line traversing the image is a diffraction spike from a bright star located just off the frame.

Note: This image depicts data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

[Image Description: A James Webb Space Telescope image of galaxy cluster MACS0647 and the very distant galaxy MACS0647-JD. At left, the cluster appears as a sea of galaxies on a black background and three small boxes outlined in white mark the locations of the three images of galaxy MACS0647-JD. Enlarged images of these boxes appear in a column down the right side of the screen]