GOODS-South: Over 45 Thousand Galaxies | James Webb Space Telescope

GOODS-South: Over 45 Thousand Galaxies | James Webb Space Telescope

Thousands of small galaxies are scattered on a black background. Some are noticeably spirals, either face-on or edge-on, while others are blobby ellipticals. Many are too small to discern any structure. A few spirals are bluish, but most of the galaxies appear yellow or red. A handful of stars display eight-point diffraction spikes.

This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was taken for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, program. It shows a portion of an area of the sky known as GOODS-South, which has been well studied by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. More than 45,000 galaxies are visible here.

Using these and other data, the JADES team has discovered hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 600 million years old. The sheer number of these galaxies was far beyond predictions from observations made before Webb’s launch.

The team also has identified galaxies that existed during a time known as the Epoch of Reionization, when the universe underwent a transformation from opaque to transparent. Many of these galaxies shown unusually strong emission line signatures due to the creation of multitudes of hot, massive stars.

Credits:

Image: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Marcia Rieke (University of Arizona), Daniel Eisenstein (CfA)

Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Release Date: June 5, 2023

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