JWST plucks one single star out of a galaxy seen 12.5 billion years ago

After years of build-up and anticipation, the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched into orbit on December 25th, 2021 (what a Christmas present, huh?). Since then, the stunning images and data it has returned have proven beyond a doubt that it was the best Christmas present ever. After its first year of operations, the JWST has lived up to one of its primary objectives: to observe the first stars and galaxies that populated the universe. The next-generation observatory has accomplished that by setting new distance records and revealing galaxies that existed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.