James Webb: Earliest and most distant galaxy ever observed
The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched in 2021 as a joint endeavour of the US, European and Canadian space agencies.
It was designed specifically to see farther across the cosmos – and further back in time – than any previous astronomical tool.
One of its key objectives was to find the very first stars to ignite in the nascent Universe.
These giant objects, perhaps many hundreds of times the mass of our Sun, were made only of hydrogen and helium.
They are theorised to have burnt brilliant but brief lives, forging in their nuclear cores the heavier chemical elements known in nature today.
In JADES-GS-z14-0, Webb can see a significant amount of oxygen, which tells researchers the galaxy is already quite mature.
“The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy,” added Drs Carniani and Hainline.
