S. Fujimoto

Imagine a city where streetlights shine, but their glow isn't scattered by fog — instead, it streams into the sky almost entirely. That's what galaxy U37126 looks like, as seen by astronomers in the early universe with the James Webb Space Telescope. Its light has traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach us.

The city has long been asleep: not a single lit window, not a single new house. Only in the very center, in one lone building, someone forgot to turn off a spotlight. That's what a galaxy looks like when stars are no longer born, yet its central black hole still shines.

A vast city lights new streetlamps every night. But then a hurricane sweeps in, rips all the fuel from the warehouses, and the lamps go out one by one. Something similar has been spotted by astronomers in a galaxy whose light has traveled 12.5 billion years to reach us.