Earliest Strands of The Cosmic Web: The ASPIRE Cosmic Filament | NASA Webb

Earliest Strands of The Cosmic Web: The ASPIRE Cosmic Filament | NASA Webb

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a filament of ten galaxies seen just 830 million years after the birth of the universe. Woven across our universe is a weblike structure of galaxies called the cosmic web. Galaxies are strung along filaments in this vast web, which also contains enormous voids. Now, astronomers using Webb have discovered an early strand of this structure, a long, narrow filament of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar—a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes this early thread of the cosmic web will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies.

Image Description: This deep galaxy field from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows an arrangement of ten distant galaxies marked by eight white circles in a diagonal, thread-like line. (Two of the circles contain more than one galaxy.) The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the middle of the cluster of three circles on the right side of the image. Its brightness outshines its host galaxy. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies.

Credits: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA)/Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Feige Wang (University of Arizona)

Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Release Date: June 29, 2023

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