330 Million Years After the Big Bang (Galaxy GS-z13-1)

Light from galaxy GS-z13-1 began its journey toward us just 330 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was in its infancy. Seen here as a faint red dot, this record-breaking galaxy provides a glimpse into an era when the first stars were being born. Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) first revealed GS-z13-1 as an extremely distant candidate in the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). Its light has been stretched, or redshifted, into infrared wavelengths as it traveled more than 13 billion years across space. To confirm its distance, astronomers used Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). The instrument detected a powerful hydrogen signal known as Lyman-α emission, evidence of hot, newly forming stars or possibly an early active galactic nucleus. This discovery pushes the frontier of how early galaxies could form and shine.