Has the Webb telescope discovered the oldest galaxy known to exist? Here are the opinions of the experts.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an American space agency, just unveiled the first full-color, high-definition images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The breathtaking pictures served as a testament to what people are capable of. NASA lifted the veil on the cosmos’ billions of years of evolution.

The photographs are currently being examined by specialists and scientists. According to the most recent development, the James Webb telescope may have discovered a galaxy that was present 13.5 billion years ago, according to a scientist who studied the data from the telescope on Wednesday (July 20).

Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics told news agency AFP that the collection of stars – called GLASS-z13 is a galaxy that apparently dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang.

It implies that the Earth was formed roughly 100 million years before anything previously known. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered GN-Z11, the previous oldest galaxy.

‘We’re maybe staring at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen,’ Naidu added, according to AFP.

‘Two strong contenders for extremely far-off galaxies were discovered. The cosmos would only be a few hundred million years old at that time if these galaxies were located at the distance we believe they are’ speaking to New Scientist, he stated.

Notably, the time it takes for an object’s light to reach us increases with how far away it is from us. In order to glimpse into the distant universe’s past, one must therefore look back in time.

Though GLASS-z13 existed in the earliest era of the universe, its exact age remains unknown as it could have formed anytime within the first 300 million years.

It is believed that the main infrared imager, or NIRcam, of the orbiting observatory is where the GLASS-z13 was first discovered. However, the discovery was not made public in the first image collection released by NASA last week.

The galaxy appears as a red blob with white in the centre when converted from infrared to visible light.