Here's an image of a group of galaxies in the kinds of light we can't see - infrared, X-ray and visible light. It captures what these galaxies looked like when the universe was only 6.5 billion years old, about half as old as it is now.

 

Most of the galaxies in our universe are in groups of galaxies like the one in this photo. Studying these groups helps us understand how galaxies combine to form larger structures, galaxy clusters.

Image description:

A deep space field with thousands of galaxies of various shapes and sizes on a black background. Several golden galaxies are clustered close together in the center. Above the galaxies lies a large, translucent purple cloud, thickest in the center where the golden galaxies are located and fading to the right. This shows where the X-rays are emitted by the hot gas in the galaxy group. The second image is the same image without the purple X-ray data.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco and COSMOS-Web team

The image is a combination of infrared data from the Webb telescope and infrared and visible light observations from Hubble. The parts in purple show data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton telescope, revealing where hot gas emits X-rays. The second image is based on data from Webb and Hubble alone.