Earliest-known galaxy, spotted by Webb telescope, is a beacon to cosmic dawn

By Will Dunham – Reuters

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest-known galaxy, one that is surprisingly bright and big considering it formed during the universe’s infancy – at only 2% its current age.

Webb, which by peering across vast cosmic distances is looking way back in time, observed the galaxy as it existed about 290 million years after the Big Bang event that initiated the universe roughly 13.8 billion years ago, the researchers said. This period spanning the universe’s first few hundred million years is called cosmic dawn.