James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

JADES-GS-z13-0: the most distant galaxy known to humanity

The little red dot in the middle of the image is JADES-GS-z13-0, an extremely distant, ancient galaxy found by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and currently holds the record for the most confirmed distant galaxy we have ever discovered with a redshift of z=13.2. This galaxy lies in an area of the sky called GOODS, and specifically in GOODS-South, a wide area containing Hubble Ultra Deep Field. This area was widely studied by multiple research groups, which on of them is JADES, who found this galaxy. JADES-GS-z13-0 is so distant, that it took the light 13.6 billion years(!) to reach us, and due to the expansion of the universe, it is currently about 33.6 billion light years away. Because of its great distance, we see this galaxy as it was in the very early universe, only ~200 million years after the Big Bang. A paper from a few months ago suggests this isn't actually a galaxy but a dark star. JWST is ideal for detecting such galaxies. When light travels great distances its wavelength gets stretched and it becomes infrared, and thus the high resolution infrared instruments of JWST can easily detect what normal optical telescopes can't. GOODS field images by JWST Raw images of GOODS by JWST JWST-JADES images & data Nature article