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Galaxy Formation
Found by Hubble before JWST's launch, GNz7q looked like a mix of a galaxy and a quasar. Was it actually our first known "little red dot"?
To learn how our Universe grew up, we have to look at large numbers of galaxies at all distances to find out. Good thing we have JWST!
Our Sun only arose after 9.2 billion years of cosmic history: with many stars living and dying first. How many prior generations were there?
By deeply imaging a large volume of space, COSMOS-Web provides JWST's widest cosmic views. Its gravitational lenses reveal a big surprise.
As the Universe ages, it continues to gravitate, form stars, and expand. And yet, all this will someday end. Do we finally understand how?
JWST isn't the first telescope to peer into this factory of star-birth some 5500 light-years away, but its views are the most educational.
With several seemingly incompatible observations, cosmology faces many puzzles. Could early, supermassive stars be the unified solution?
As we look to larger cosmic scales, we get a broader view of the expansive cosmic forest, eventually revealing the grandest views of all.
Designed to map galaxies, the SPHEREx mission's first science result is instead about interstellar interloper 3I/ATLAS. No, it's not aliens.
At the center of Hubble's famous "cosmic horseshoe," a very heavy supermassive black hole has been robustly measured. How is it possible?
On the largest scales, galaxies don't simply clump together, but form superclusters. Too bad they don't remain bound together.
Originally, the abundance of bright, early galaxies shocked astronomers. After 3 years of JWST, we now know what's really going on.
For hundreds of millions of years, a cosmic fog blocked all signs of starlight. At last, JWST found the galaxies that cleared that fog away.
The tiniest galaxies of all are the most severely dominated by dark matter. Could black holes be the cause of the extra gravity instead?
The first galaxies were irregular blobs of gas and stars. But modern features, like spiral arms and bars, appeared earlier than expected.
If the Universe is 13.8 billion years old today, but different ages the farther we look back, what does it mean for a star to be the first?
The COSMOS-Web has just finalized their release of their full field: larger and deeper than any other JWST program. Here's what's inside.
For decades, astronomers have claimed the Milky Way will merge with Andromeda in ~4 billion years. Here's why, in 2025, that seems unlikely.
In our Universe, dark matter outmasses normal matter by a 5-to-1 ratio, shaping the Universe as we know it. What if it simply weren't there?
Many were hoping that JWST would find the first stars of all. Despite many hopeful claims, it hasn't, and probably can't. Here's how we can.
Coming from just 280 million years after the Big Bang, or 98% of cosmic history ago, this new, massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.
There's an old saying that "what you see is what you get." When it comes to the Universe, however, there's often more to the full story.
With stars, gas, and dark matter, galaxies come in a great array of sizes. This new one, Ursa Major III/UNIONS 1, is the smallest by far.
The COSMOS-Web survey is now complete, combining JWST and Hubble infrared data. Its spectacular views show us the Universe as never before.
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was originally seen as a colossal mistake. This one image, taken in 1995, changed everything.
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
Large, massive, rotating galaxies like the Milky Way are common today. So how could one form a mere ~2 billion years after the Big Bang?
Someday, we'll look back and see a young galaxy forming stars for the first time. JADES-GS-z14-0, the farthest ever, isn't early enough.
Our scientific instruments are constantly improving, revealing nature's workings as never before. Without them, we'll remain in the dark.
Some nebulae emit their own light, some reflect the light from stars around them, and some only absorb light. But that's just the beginning.