John R. Weaver

A distant red object usually means one thing: we're seeing a dust veil over a scorching disk falling into a black hole. But when the James Webb split its light into shades, a shadow appeared inside — just like steam from boiling water intercepts rays.

The first two billion years after the Big Bang were an era when the universe resembled a boiling construction pit. Dark matter clumped the gas together, igniting the first stars. It seemed there simply wasn't enough time to assemble massive elliptical galaxies—'dormant' stellar metropolises — from this raw material.

The night sky is full of deceptive lights. Astronomers were searching for galaxies that ignited in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang: their light has traveled to us for nearly 13 billion years. Six faint smudges were selected from images taken by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.