COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam pullout image)

The galaxy designated MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy ever detected, spotted by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and confirmed spectroscopically with its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument.

Through Webb, we are seeing this galaxy as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the Universe began in the big bang. Its light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to reach us.

Like some other galaxies Webb has discovered in the early Universe, MoM-z14 is brighter, more compact, and more chemically enriched than astronomers expected to find in this early era. While it may pass out of record books quickly as the farthest galaxy, MoM-z14 will still play a role in helping astronomers and theorists reach new understanding of the earliest chapters in the Universe’s story.

[Image description: A wide field of view showing deep space, dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display six diffraction spikes. One galaxy is highlighted with a magnified image in a graphic pull-out box in the lower right corner. The galaxy is labeled MoM-z14 and appears as a blurry yellow blob with a small red area at its top.]