On May 27, 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released its deepest observation to date, focusing on the galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This image, captured as part of the GLIMPSE program, offers unprecedented insights into the universe's distant past.
Abell S1063, located 4.5 billion light-years away in the constellation Grus, acts as a gravitational lens. Its immense gravity bends and magnifies the light from galaxies behind it, enabling JWST to observe faint, distant galaxies that would otherwise be undetectable. The telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captured nine snapshots across different near-infrared wavelengths, totaling 120 hours of exposure time.
The resulting deep-field image reveals numerous lensing arcs, each a distorted image of a galaxy from the early universe. This observation provides a glimpse into the Cosmic Dawn, the era when the first galaxies began to form, potentially revealing previously unseen features and helping scientists understand the origins of the cosmos. This marks Webb's deepest look at a single object to date.