The James Webb Space Telescope captures a new image of the distant universe.

 The James Webb Space Telescope has conducted its "most distant observation to date" of a single target in the universe, revealing galaxies that formed in the distant past, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Tuesday.

"Thanks to gravitational lensing, this observation revealed the first galaxies and stars that formed during the first billion years of the universe's history," the CNRS said in a statement, adding that the Institut de Astrofédération de Paris (Institut de Physique de Paris) participated in the research.

The telescope required 120 hours of observation to capture the new image, the longest period of time the James Webb has focused on a single target.

The European Space Agency noted that this achievement is "the deepest observation of a single target by the James Webb Space Telescope to date," making the new image one of the deepest images of the universe ever taken.

At the center of the image is the bright Abell S1063, a massive cluster of galaxies located 4.5 billion light-years from Earth.

These giant celestial objects can bend light emitted from objects behind them, creating a kind of cosmic magnifying glass called a "gravitational lens."

The European Space Agency explained in its statement that what interests scientists are the "distorted arcs" orbiting Abell S 1063.

Since observing the depths of the universe also means looking back in time, scientists hope to understand how the first galaxies formed during a period called the "cosmic dawn," when the universe was only a few million years old.

The image includes nine separate snapshots at different wavelengths in the near-infrared region, according to the European Space Agency.

Since its launch in 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope has ushered in a new era of scientific discovery.

It has revealed, in particular, that galaxies in the early universe were much larger than scientists previously thought, raising questions about our current understanding of the cosmos.