What is the most distant thing we can see?

A field of distant galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

To the unaided human eye, the night sky is resplendent with over 9,000 individual points of light, but that perspective covers only a bare fraction of the universe.

The nearest visible star system is Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.25 light-years away. The closest star in this three-star system is Proxima Centauri, but because it's a red dwarf, it's too dim to be seen without a telescope.