The cutting-edge observatory is charged with seeing some of the earliest visible light, and the recent image achieves a new milestone in stellar astronomy.

Telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope can observe some incredibly distant galaxies, stretching all the way back to the early universe. However, spotting individual stars in distant galaxies is tricky even for Webb and its massive primary mirror.

An international team of astronomers has detected over 40 individual stars in a galaxy located 6.5 billion light-years away. The discovery of more than 40 stars in a single galaxy is unprecedented, as prior observations typically revealed only one or two such stars per galaxy.