James Webb Telescope Reveals Milky Way-like Galaxies in Young Universe

January 5, 2023 • by Marc Airhart

Startling new images show how much more powerful JWST is than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Two images of the same galaxy, one blurry, the other with crisp spiral arms and a central bar

The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it look through dust and unveil the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205, seen as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and impacted by the glare of young stars, but in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar. Credit: NASA/Guo, Jogee, Finkelstein and CEERS collaboration/University of Texas at Austin


Six galaxies with bar-shaped features in their middles

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