By BlueShift | 2025-08-15

By enabling the discovery of a bright, ultra-distant galaxy that is the farthest observed to date, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to deepen understanding of the universe, while raising new questions.

A research paper published in May on the open-access academic archive arXiv described the "remarkably luminous galaxy," known as MoM-z14, as "a cosmic miracle."

Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist Rohan Naidu, the study's lead author, combed through existing JWST images with colleagues for potential early galaxies to check, Live Science reported May 28.

After identifying MoM-z14 as a possible target, they turned the telescope toward it in April.

The discovery paper is the first result from "Mirage or Miracle" (MoM), a spectroscopic survey focused on confirming the distances of extremely bright, high-redshift galaxies, per a May 21 Big Think report.

The survey, which confirmed MoM-z14 was not a "mirage," tests the abundance and nature of luminous galaxies and galaxy candidates from roughly the first 500 million years of cosmic history.

"JWST has revealed a stunning population of bright galaxies at surprisingly early epochs, z > 10, where few such sources were expected," per the research paper.

MoM-z14, a luminous source in the COSMOS legacy field, is the most distant example of this class yet, the study's authors said, noting that this "expands the observational frontier to a mere 280 million years after the Big Bang."

"This is the most distant object known to humanity," Yale University astronomy professor and research team member Pieter van Dokkum told Space.com.

Fresh insights into distant past

The discovery breaks the record previously held by the JADES-GS-z14-0 galaxy, also observed by the JWST, for the most distant and earliest galaxy observed.

That galaxy existed about 300 million years after the Big Bang.

It underscores the JWST’s unequaled ability to peer into the universe’s distant past, offering fresh insights into its earliest epochs and challenging existing theories about early galaxy formation.

Launched in December 2021, NASA's JWST has revolutionized human understanding of the early universe. Its advanced instruments enable scientists to analyze infrared light and determine galaxies’ distances and compositions.

JWST's ability to detect galaxies at high redshifts -- where light from distant objects is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths due to the universe’s expansion -- allows astronomers to observe objects from billions of years ago.

The discovery of MoM z14, which existed during the "cosmic dawn," when galaxies first started to coalesce, challenges pre-JWST expectations about the early universe.

"The broader story here is that JWST was not expected to find any galaxies this early in the history of the universe, at least not at this stage of the mission," van Dokkum told Space.com.

"There are, very roughly, over 100 more relatively bright galaxies in the very early universe than were expected."

By observing galaxies such as MoM z14, astronomers can gain insights into how the first stars formed, how heavy elements like carbon and oxygen were created, and how these elements influenced subsequent generations of stars.

JWST has shown that many early galaxies were more massive and luminous than expected, suggesting that stars may have formed more quickly and abundantly in the universe’s infancy.

It has enabled researchers to discover that some early galaxies, including MoM z14, exhibit unusual shapes and sizes, which challenge existing models of galaxy formation and raise new questions, opening fresh horizons for further study.