NASA - Poster - 20. ASPIRE Cosmic Filament (NIRCam Image) - James Webb Space Telescope

This deep galaxy field from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows an arrangement of 10 distant galaxies marked by eight white circles in a diagonal, thread-like line. (Two of the circles contain more than one galaxy.)

This 3 million light-year-long filament is anchored by a very distant and luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the middle of the cluster of three circles on the right side of the image. Its brightness outshines its host galaxy.

The 10 marked galaxies existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies.

Credits
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Feige Wang (University of Arizona)
Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Keywords: Deep Fields, Distant Galaxies, Galaxy Clusters