Joris Witstok

A cosmic neon sign lit up in an incredibly distant galaxy: almost all its light comes from hot gas, and the stars are lost in this glow. The James Webb telescope recorded that the gas, a mix of hydrogen and helium, is so heated that it glows on its own.

Light from a distant galaxy traveled to us for 13.4 billion years. The James Webb Space Telescope caught it and split it into colors. The spectrum shows a bright hydrogen line, like a fingerprint saying that galaxy GS-z13-1-LA is actively forming stars. Young hot stars inside the galaxy act like floodlights.

400 million years after the Big Bang, the James Webb Space Telescope noticed a bright spot near the galaxy GN-z11 — like a distant lighthouse whose light pushed through the primordial darkness.

Out in the distant cosmos, there are galaxies that astronomers have nicknamed 'little red dots': in images they appear as tiny reddish specks, even though they are mind-bogglingly far away. Their light looks red not because they are cold, but because the expanding universe stretches light waves.