The Cosmic Buffet

Look at the picture closely. You might notice a few ‘twinkling’ stars, with diffraction spikes around them. These are stars from our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Everything else, and I mean every single point of light, bright or faint or barely there, is a galaxy. There is a cluster of galaxies glowing with white-gold light at the center of the photo. The light from this galaxy group has travelled for 6.5 billion years before reaching the JWST, which means that we are seeing the galaxy as it appeared when the universe was half its present age (the universe is estimated to the 13.8 billion years old). The galaxy group might look quite different today, but we will have to wait another 6.5 billion years for its present-day photograph to reach us!