On May 27, 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope offered us a unique image of the Universe, described as "James Webb's deepest look at a single target to date," as announced by the CNRS and the European Space Agency. A snapshot that reveals the very first galaxies and the first stars in the Universe.
The James Webb telescope offers us a unique snapshot of the Universe
Indeed, it is as part of a program called Glimpse that around thirty researchers, including French astrophysicists from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, shared an incredible photo of the Universe taken using the James Webb telescope.
In this snapshot, considered the deepest ever taken of the Universe, we can discover a multitude of galaxies located in the constellation of the Crane. To capture this image, the space telescope had to observe the target for more than 120 hours. A record for this device. Thus, as the CNRS explains, with "the gravitational lensing effect, these observations reveal the very first galaxies and the first stars that formed during the first billion years of the history of the Universe."
With nine shots taken at different wavelengths in the near infrared, we notice a cluster of galaxies forming a brighter patch than the others in the center of the image. This is Abell S1063, a massive grouping of galaxies located 4.5 billion light-years from Earth. Due to its mass, this galaxy cluster manages to bend the light behind it. This is called a gravitational lens: like a magnifying glass, it allows us to see further. And since the further we look into the Universe, the further back in time we go, the researchers in this program believe they have managed to identify galaxies that appeared only 250 million years after the Big Bang.
Stars formed at the dawn of our Universe
One of these galaxies, which has been named Glimpse-16043, is thought to contain Population III stars. This is the first generation of stars that formed from hydrogen and helium, the only elements present in the Universe at this time.
This image delivered by the James Webb telescope offers new perspectives for astronomy that will allow us to study the evolution of galaxies and the formation of stars in order to better understand the origins and history of the Universe. Researchers will conduct new observations next July to confirm that these are indeed Population III stars that were only theoretical and had never been observed by a telescope.
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