We love when astronomers share images from the James Webb Space Telescope because they are so beautiful and spectacular. But of course, science is more than just pretty pictures. A research team has used a telescope to map the cosmic web, a collection of dark matter, gas and filaments that connect large objects in space. As it is described in a blog post from the University of California, Riverside, the cosmic web “forms the underlying architecture of the universe, connecting galaxies and clusters into a single, complex and far-reaching structure.” Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the team has created the most detailed map of this fundamental structure yet.
“The leap in depth and resolution is truly significant, and we can now see the cosmic web at a time when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, an era that was essentially out of reach before JWST,” said Bahram Mobasher, UCR professor and an investigator on the study. “What looked like one structure now turns into several, and details that were previously smooth are now clearly visible.”
According to lead author Hossein Hatmaniya, a graduate student at UCR and Carnegie Observatories, “For the first time we can study the evolution of galaxies in cluster and filamentary structures over cosmic time, from when the universe was a billion years old to the nearby universe.”
An academic paper covering the development of this survey was published The Astrophysical Journal.
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