A team led by the University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein discovered the system last summer. (The name “Maisie’s galaxy” is an ode to his daughter because they spotted it on her birthday.) The group initially estimated that it was only 290 million years after the Big Bang, but analyzing the galaxy with more advanced equipment revealed it’s about 100 million years older than that. “The exciting thing about Maisie’s galaxy is that it was one of the first distant galaxies identified by JWST, and of that set, it’s the first to actually be spectroscopically confirmed,” said Finkelstein.

The spectroscopic confirmation came courtesy of the JWST’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) conducted by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS). The NIRSpec “splits an object’s light into many different narrow frequencies to more accurately identify its chemical makeup, heat output, intrinsic brightness and relative motion.” Redshift — the movement of light towards longer (redder) wavelengths to indicate motion away from the observer — held the key to more accurate dating than the original photometry-based estimate. The advanced tools assigned a redshift of z=11.4 to Maisie’s galaxy, helping the researchers settle on the revised estimate of 390 million years after the Big Bang.

The astronomers also examined CEERS-93316, a galaxy initially estimated at 235 million years pre-Big Bang — which would have made it astonishingly old. After studying this system, it revealed a redshift of z=4.9, which places it at a mere one billion years after the Big Bang. The first faulty estimate about CEERS-93316 was understandable: The galaxy emitted an unusual amount of light in narrow frequency bands associated with oxygen and hydrogen, making it appear bluer than it was.

Finkelstein chalks up the miss to bad luck. “This was a kind of weird case,” he said. “Of the many tens of high redshift candidates that have been observed spectroscopically, this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.” Finkelstein added, “It would have been really challenging to explain how the universe could create such a massive galaxy so soon. So, I think this was probably always the most likely outcome, because it was so extreme, so bright, at such an apparent high redshift.”

The CEERS team is now evaluating about 10 more systems that could be older than Maisie’s galaxy.

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The first image (above) was taken with the NIRCam (Near InfraRed Camera), one of the Webb Space Telescope’s primary sensors. It is designed to detect light in the near-infrared spectrum and can capture remarkably detailed images. NIRCam also took the equally hypnotizing updated image of the Pillars of Creation.

Meanwhile, the second image (below) was captured using the JWST’s MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). It better highlights the nebula’s (roughly) ten concentric arcs beyond its outer edge, likely formed from its central star’s interaction with a lower-mass companion in its orbit. “In this way, nebulae like the Ring Nebula reveal a kind of astronomical archaeology, as astronomers study the nebula to learn about the star that created it,” the European Space Agency wrote in a press release.

The Ring Nebula was discovered somewhat serendipitously in 1779 by French astronomers Charles Messier and Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix while they searched for comets. It’s a planetary nebula, named as such because early researchers mistook their appearances for distant worlds. The Ring Nebula formed from a medium-sized star that shed its outer layers as it exhausted its fuel and approached its demise.

“The colourful main ring is composed of gas thrown off by a dying star at the centre of the nebula,” the ESA wrote. “This star is on its way to becoming a white dwarf — a very small, dense, and hot body that is the final evolutionary stage for a star like the Sun.”

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The observations made using the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument showed scientists that the carbon dioxide on Europa is most abundant in an area called Tara Regio, or “chaos terrain.” In the images above, you’ll see Tara Regio as the yellowish area to the left of the moon’s center.

Emily Martin, a planetary geologist at the National Air and Space Museum, told Scientific American that scientists believe Tara Regio’s ice surface broke up when the weather got warm enough at one point. That caused the water from the subsurface ocean to come up, until it got cold again to create a slushy icy water sort of area. It’s worth noting that previous Hubble observations of the region show that it also contains table salt, which indicates that saltwater, indeed, could’ve risen up to the surface of the moon.

If Europa’s carbon dioxide truly did come from its ocean instead of from meteors or other sources, then it would establish a big similarity between our planet and the moon. Europa is one of the objects in our solar system that’s under observation for potentially having the conditions to support life. In April this year, the European Space Agency launched the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer or JUICE to make detailed observations of the planet’s ocean-bearing moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Meanwhile, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will focus on the potential for life in the moon’s ocean, is scheduled to take off sometime next year.

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This area is about 300 light-years from the galaxy’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A, and over 25,000 light-years from a little blue rock called Earth. All told, the region boasts over 500,000 stars and various clusters of protostars, which are stars that are still forming and gaining mass. The end result? A stunning cloud of chaos, especially when compared to our region of space, which is decidedly sparse in comparison.

As a matter of fact, the galactic center is “the most extreme environment” in the Milky Way, as stated by University of Virginia professor Jonathan Tan, who assisted the observation team. There has never been any data on this region with this “level of resolution and sensitivity”, until now, thanks to the power of the Webb telescope.

At the center of everything is a massive protostar that weighs more than 30 times our sun. This actually makes the area seem less populated than it actually is, as this solar object blocks light from behind it, so not even Webb can see all of the stars in the region. So what you’re looking at is a conservative estimate of just how crowded the area is. It’s like the Times Square of space, only without a Guy Fieri restaurant (for now.)

The data provided by these images will allow researchers to put current theories of star formation to “their most rigorous test.” To that end, Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument captured large-scale emission imagery from ionized hydrogen, the blue on the lower side of the image. This is likely the result of young and massive stars releasing energetic photons, but the vast size of the region came as a surprise to researchers, warranting further study.

The observation team’s principal investigator, Samuel Crowe, said that the research enabled by these and forthcoming images will allow scientists to understand the nature of massive stars which is akin to “learning the origin story of much of the universe.”

This is obviously not the first interesting image produced by the James Webb telescope. We’ve seen stars born in the Virgo constellation, water around a comet in the main asteroid belt and a fairly offputting view of the Pillars of Creation, among others. It’s seen things you people wouldn't believe and, luckily, it won’t all be gone like tears in the rain because of the internet and because Webb’s still out there.

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