Webb Telescope gets first-ever glimpse of forming stars in faraway galaxies

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers at Stockholm University have gotten a first-ever glimpse of stars forming in faraway galaxies.

According to Phys.org, the researchers used the telescope to seek out observable galaxy clusters, which are essentially a very intense cluster of stars that form the center of a galaxy.

"The galaxy clusters we examined are so massive that they bend light rays passing through their center, as predicted by Einstein in 1915," explains Stockholm University astronomer Adélaïde Claeyssens, who was a lead author of a study on the clusters published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "And this in turn produces a kind of magnifying glass effect: the images of background galaxies are magnified."

This gave researchers the ability to observe the formation of galaxies as never before -- or, as Stockholm University astronomer Angela Adamo put it, "the telescope is a game-changer for the entire field of research and helps us understand how galaxies form and evolve."

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Of course, the images that scientists are observing from the forming galaxies actually occurred billions of years ago, as that is how long it took for the light of the galaxies to reach Earth. The oldest galaxy found by the telescope began its formation roughly 13 billion years ago, at which time researchers estimate that the universe was less than a billion years old.