Astronomers have long understood that the universe is expanding—in other words, the space in between cosmic objects that aren’t bound by gravity is getting ever more vast. Then, in 1998, scientists discovered the universe’s rate of expansion is accelerating.

This Webb image captured distinct star clusters in the Firefly Sparkle galaxy which formed 600 million years after the Big Bang. This is the image of a galaxy cluster which is still in the development process, located 10 billion light years away from Earth.

Mowla, who spotted the galaxy in Webb’s image, was drawn to its gleaming star clusters, because objects that sparkle typically indicate they are extremely clumpy and complicated. Since the galaxy looks like a ‘sparkle’ or swarm of fireflies on a warm summer night, they named it the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.

The James Webb telescope spent another year collecting instantly iconic space imagery. Here are some of our favorites.

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have reinforced the Hubble tension, a discrepancy between different measurements of the universe's expansion rate. Scientists, using Cepheid variable stars,