A unique section of the new COSMOS map, showing the impressive diversity of galaxies collected in JWST's recent survey of the sky. (Image credit: M. Franco/C. Casey/COSMOS-Web collaboration)
Researchers have unveiled the most extensive map of the universe ever created. It covers a small fragment of space and almost all of cosmic time, with some 800,000 galaxies depicted across the universe. Some are so distant that we see them as they were in the universe's infancy, some 13 billion years ago.
The map, released on Thursday (June 5) by researchers from the Cosmic Evolution Survey, covers a patch of sky measuring 0.54 degrees squared, about three times the space occupied by the Moon when viewed from Earth.
To gather data for the map, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spent 255 hours observing a region of space called the COSMOS field. This patch of sky contains very few stars, gas clouds, or other objects that obscure our view of the deep universe, so scientists surveyed it using telescopes at as many wavelengths of light as possible.
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Six galaxies from the COSMOS-Web map, each with a different age. From top left to bottom right: the present universe, 3 billion, 4 billion, 8 billion, 9 billion, and 10 billion years ago.
JWST's observations of the COSMOS field have given us an incredibly detailed view of the Universe, spanning up to 13.5 billion years.
As the universe expands, visible light that has left its source on the other side of the universe is stretched into infrared light. That's why JWST was designed to be extremely sensitive.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
