James Webb Space Telescope finds 2 of the most distant galaxies ever seen

A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star. Scattered between these areas are many smaller sources of light; some also have a hazy white glow, while many other are red or orange.

The second and fourth most distant galaxies ever seen have been spotted by the eagle eye of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), supporting the basic picture of galaxy formation as described by the Big Bang theory.

The discovery was made possible thanks to a huge helping hand from a massive gravitational lens in the form of the galaxy cluster known as Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, which is located about 3.5 billion light-years away from us. The immense gravity of the cluster warps the very fabric of space-time sufficiently to magnify the light of more faraway galaxies.