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3d ago

James Webb Maps the Universe’s Cosmic Web in Record Detail

A public trove of data now invites fast follow-up on galaxy growth within filaments and clusters.

James Webb telescope (left) landscape of star birth by James Webb telescope (right)
Planets, stars, and galaxies in outer space (© Maximusdn - stock.adobe.com)
Image
A slice through the COSMOS-Web cosmic-web map, showing galaxies across nearly 14 billion years of cosmic history. The vertex on the left marks the present day; moving outward, each galaxy is placed at its distance in cosmic time, reaching back to when the universe was less than a billion years old. Bright yellow regions show the dense clusters and filaments of the cosmic web, while dark regions mark the near-empty voids in between. image: © Hossein Hatamnia, UC Riverside.

Overview

  • Astronomers using JWST’s COSMOS-Web produced the most detailed map yet of galaxy networks reaching back to when the universe was about one billion years old.
  • The map charts the cosmic web, a scaffold of dark-matter and gas filaments that link galaxies and surround vast empty voids.
  • The survey covers a sky area about the size of three full Moons and catalogs 164,000 galaxies with positions across 13.7 billion years.
  • JWST’s infrared sensitivity detects many fainter, more distant galaxies and yields sharper distance estimates, revealing structures Hubble blurred together.
  • The team released the analysis pipeline, density maps, a public catalog, and a video of the web’s evolution, enabling global researchers to test how environment shapes galaxy evolution.