Something missing from this discussion that's worth pointing out: This image shows profound "gravitational lensing", which you know. But what you might not kno

Something missing from this discussion that's worth pointing out: This image shows profound "gravitational lensing", which you know. But what you might not know is that is precisely _why_ they chose to photograph it. This galaxy cluster (SMACS 0723) may be the most well known and powerful gravitational lens we have observed. The galaxies shown distorted around the edges are actually behind the lens, but are magnified by it. This means we can see even farther in this region of space than normal, because we compound the power of the JWST with the power of this natural lens. It all adds up to providing the "deepest" view of the universe yet, allowing us to see galaxies at a distance of more than 13.2B lightyears. This lets us see structures formed in the infancy of the universe, that wouldn't be possible looking at most other points in the sky, or even anywhere else in this deep field besides the perimeter of the lens in the middle.