Overview
- Astronomers using JWST’s COSMOS-Web survey mapped the universe’s filament network back to about a billion years after the Big Bang.
- The survey maps a sky field about the size of three full moons to catalog roughly 164,000 galaxies with precise distance estimates.
- JWST’s infrared sensitivity reveals many faint, distant galaxies and produces a clearer large‑scale structure than earlier Hubble maps.
- Early analysis suggests the cosmic web guided galaxy growth over time and may have reduced star formation in older galaxies.
- The team published the study in The Astrophysical Journal and released the maps, pipeline, catalog, and an animated evolution video for public use.