What do you see?

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]Take a look at this image and tell me what you see.

[00:00:05]Many people would say they see a large group of stars. And while technically correct, it goes much deeper than that.

[00:00:12]This image taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope features an astounding number of galaxies. The objects in this frame span an incredible range of distances from stars within our own Milky Way marked by defraction spikes to galaxies billions of light years away.

[00:00:30]The celebrity of this image is a group of galaxies, the largest concentration of which can be found just below the center of the image. These galaxies glow with white gold light. We see this galaxy group as it appeared when the universe was 6.5 billion years old. A little less than half of the universe's current age. More than half of the galaxies in our universe belong to galaxy groups like the one pictured here. Studying galaxy groups is critical for understanding how individual galaxies link up to form galaxy clusters. The largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe.

[00:01:08]Belonging to a galaxy group can also alter the course of a galaxy's evolution through mergers and gravitational interactions.

[00:01:17]So take a look at this image and tell me what you see now.