NASA's James Webb captures more than 45,000 galaxies in one frame as it traces the birth of the universe

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has shared a mesmerising and never-before-seenpictureshowing more than 45,000 galaxies in one frame. The picture was of a portion of the sky known as GOODS-Sout.

James Webb Space Telescope captured the image as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey programme.

As per the space agency, around 32 days of the telescope time will be devoted to the JADES programme to uncover and characterise distant and faint galaxies as astronomers make efforts to understand how the first stars and galaxies were formed.

Although the data is still pouring in, hundreds of galaxies have already been discovered that existed when the universe had not completed 600 million years. Galaxies, which were sparkling along with a number of young, hot stars, have also been identified by the team.

Co-lead of the JADES programme and professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson Marcia Rieke said, "With JADES, we want to answer a lot of questions, like: How did the earliest galaxies assemble themselves? How fast did they form stars? Why do some galaxies stop forming stars?"

The part of the sky was previously observed by the Hubble telescope.

Investigation into galaxies that existed 500 to 850 million years after the big bang

University of Texas' Ryan Endsley headed the investigation into galaxies which existed 500 to 850 million years after the big bang occurred.

"For hundreds of millions of years after the big bang, the universe was filled with a gaseous fog that made it opaque to energetic light. By one billion years after the big bang, the fog had cleared and the universe became transparent, a process known as reionisation. Scientists have debated whether active, supermassive black holes or galaxies full of hot, young stars were the primary cause of reionisation," the space agency explained.

The researchers found evidence of young galaxies going through rapid star formation interspersed with short periods where fewer stars formed.

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“Almost every single galaxy that we are finding shows these unusually strong emission line signatures indicating intense recent star formation. These early galaxies were very good at creating hot, massive stars,” stated Ryan Endsley of the University of Texas, who headed the investigation.

“Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see just looked like little smudges. And yet those smudges represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe. Now, we can see that some of them are actually extended objects with visible structures. We can see groupings of stars being born only a few hundred million years after the beginning of time,” stated Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona, in a statement.

"We're finding star formation in the early universe is much more complicated than we thought," Rieke stated.

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