Two of the oldest and most distant galaxies spotted by the James Webb telescope

If these results are verified, the new group of stars is the most distant galaxy. The current record holder, which was determined by the Hubble Space Telescope, was formed 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Two exceptionally bright galaxies have been described in detail in Astrophysical Journal Letters by an international team led by Rohan Naidu, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

According to Naidoo, the Webb telescope will need more observations in the infrared before a new record holder can be claimed. Scientists say the galaxies may be mimicking earlier galaxies.

If verified, the results would prove to be “extremely successful in pushing cosmic boundaries.” “When and how the first galaxies formed remains one of the most intriguing questions,” the researchers wrote.

These galaxies were “hiding under the limits of what Hubble could do,” noted NASA’s Jane Rigby, a project scientist at Webb.

The $10 billion observatory—the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space—orbits the sun within a mile of Earth. Full science operations began in the summer, and NASA has since released a series of dazzling snapshots of the universe.