Science & Space
Webb Reveals Young Galaxies Magnified by a Cosmic Lens
A Webb image shows distant young galaxies dramatically magnified and distorted by the MACS J0454.1-0300 galaxy cluster.
What happened
The James Webb Space Telescope captured MACS J0454.1-0300, a distant galaxy cluster seen when the Universe was about 8 billion years old. Its enormous gravity bends and magnifies background galaxies, revealing systems from as little as 800 million years after the Big Bang. Some compact star-forming regions appear magnified more than 300 times.
Why it matters
Gravitational lensing lets astronomers study distant galaxies, star clusters and individual stars that would otherwise be too faint for telescopes to observe directly.
Source: ESA