[ExI] Almost Every Speck of Light in This Incredible Image Is a Galaxy

[BillK]

Almost Every Speck of Light in This Incredible Image Is a Galaxy
05 May 2025    By Michelle Starr

<https://www.sciencealert.com/almost-every-speck-of-light-in-this-incredible-image-is-a-galaxy>
Quote:
If you ever want to get a bit of perspective, there's very little
that's more humbling than a good deep field image – and JWST has just
dropped a real showstopper.

In the latest image release, the powerful space telescope gazed back
nearly 12 billion light-years into a tiny patch of sky, less than a
fifth of the width of the full Moon. That little patch of sky is
teeming with glittering lights.

It looks a lot like any patch of the sky seen when you look up from
the ground on a cloudless night, with one major, jaw-dropping
difference.

Most of the lights in the new JWST-Hubble composite image are not
bright stars, but galaxies, stretching back almost as far across
space-time as the beginning of the Universe.
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There is also nothing special about this little patch of sky,
measuring just 6.44 by 6.44 arcminutes. The full Moon, for context, is
around 30 arcminutes across. Every other tiny patch of sky should be
just as teeming with galaxies, thousands upon thousands that can be
imaged in an area smaller than your pinky nail.

If that's not awe-inspiring, we don't know what is.
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BillK