8 stunning James Webb Space Telescope discoveries made in 2023

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The James Webb Space Telescope in outer space. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Dec. 25 is a pretty special birthday for many around the world, but it’s also a big deal for fans of astronomy — who will be celebrating the second anniversary of the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since coming online in mid-2022, the most powerful telescope ever built has both blown our minds with its stunning images and swept away many of our preconceptions about the early universe. 

From inexplicably bright galaxies to life on alien planets, and even the potential demise of our standard model of the universe, here are the JWST’s biggest findings of 2023.

Spotting six ‘impossible’ galaxies at the dawn of time 

An image of the six galaxies, whose ages range between 500 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, LABBE (Swinburne University of Technology) : G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute’s Cosmic Dawn Center, University of Copenhagen))

Not long after coming online, the JWST immediately discovered six enormous “universe breaker” galaxies, containing what seemed to be almost as many stars as the Milky Way, dating to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

Source link: https://www.livescience.com/space/8-stunning-james-webb-space-telescope-discoveries-made-in-2023 by ben.turner@futurenet.com (Ben Turner) at www.livescience.com