James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Faint Dusty Star-Forming Galaxy

Discovery of AzTECC71 suggests early universe was dustier than previously believed, challenging current understanding of galaxy evolution.

The James Webb Space Telescope has identified a faint galaxy, AzTECC71, which is a dusty star-forming galaxy, nearly 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
The discovery suggests that such galaxies might be three to 10 times as common as previously thought, indicating the early universe was much dustier than believed.
The COSMOS-Web project, the largest initial JWST research initiative, aims to map up to 1 million galaxies to study the earliest structures of the universe.
AzTECC71 was first detected as an indistinct blob of dust emission by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and the ALMA telescope in Chile, but was invisible in shorter wavelengths of light, below 2.7 microns.
With the James Webb Space Telescope's sensitivity, astronomers can study the optical and infrared properties of this heavily dust-obscured, hidden population of galaxies.