Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey (NIRCam Image)

Stare deeply at this vast landscape. It was stitched together from multiple images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light – and it is practically pulsing with activity.

To the right of center is a clump of bright white spiral galaxies that seem to be twisting into one another. Threaded throughout the scene are light pink spirals that look like pinwheels twirling in the wind. The bright foreground stars, set off in blue, announce themselves with Webb’s prominent eight-pointed diffraction spikes. Don’t miss an unconventional sight: In the bottom row, find the square second from far right. At its right edge, a misshapen blue galaxy is outfitted in blue-and-pink sparkling star clusters.

There is so much detail to explore in this panoramic vista, known as the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. The galaxies that first caught the eyes of the researchers are those that haven’t appeared in any other images – Webb was the first to reveal their presence.

To find them, seek the tiniest, reddest dots speckled throughout this survey. The light from some of them has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach the telescope. The team followed up to obtain spectra with Webb, which led to the discovery of the most distant active supermassive black hole currently known, along with two more extremely distant active supermassive black holes that existed when the universe was only 1 billion years old. The additional studies also confirmed that eleven galaxies existed when the universe was only 470 to 675 million years. (Read about seven of these extremely distant galaxies.)

Want to be wowed again? Webb spent under an hour capturing each image in this field. Combined, they show off about 100,000 galaxies.

The CEERS Survey has already proven to researchers that Webb will help us learn an incredible amount about the early universe. “Galaxies appear earlier and in higher numbers than any of our predictions estimated,” said program lead Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin. “There are so many new mysteries to explore.”

This field is one of Webb’s first observations, which is why we still know so little about it. Read more about what researchers will continue to seek in CEERS images and data.