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Some of the images the powerful James Webb Space Telescope captures are strange.

They’re so strange, astrophysicists don’t know exactly what they're looking at.

Enter team UNCOVER (a name that’s easier to remember than what it stands for:��Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization).

Starting in 2022, the group of more than 50 astrophysicists around the globe started meeting each week on Zoom to unlock the secrets of some of the oldest and most distant parts of our universe.

The group includes Erica Nelson and Wren Suess, assistant professors of astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU �Ǹ�Թ�.

Erica Nelson

Wren Suess

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Together, they review and sometimes debate what they see in the odd images and other data. The observations include galaxies and light as old as 13 billion years.��

“One of the things that I really love about having a wide network of collaborators is that people ask questions you haven’t thought to ask,” Suess said.

Sometimes a scientist will also remind the group of a research paper someone wrote a decade ago that might help guide the investigation into the strange objects.

This month, the team learned they’re earning the prestigious�� for Meritorious Work in Astronomy.

“UNCOVER has fundamentally expanded our view of the early universe, revealing a population of distant galaxies and growing black holes that was largely hidden from previous observations,” said Ted Bergin, the senior vice president for the American Astronomical Society. “Its discoveries challenge our understanding of how the cosmos took shape while setting a powerful example of how large-scale collaboration can advance astronomy.”

The Astronomical Society said��the team has discovered galaxies at cosmic dawn, including large populations of luminous galaxies and supermassive black holes in the early universe.

In the first stage of the project, UNCOVER focused on a group of distant galaxies called Pandora's Cluster.

“The cluster of galaxies is so massive it bends the light from all the things behind it, so all the galaxies further away get bent and magnified,” Suess said. “It’s the best way to use nature’s magnifying glass to look at the very, very distant universe.”

Studying the most distant parts of the universe is new to science. It requires looking at light in the infrared because the universe is expanding, and as it does so the light reaching us from distant galaxies gets stretched and shifted to the red part of the spectrum.��

“It gives us a sort of window into the evolutionary picture of these galaxies,” Suess said.

Nelson said this team of scientists has a lot of potential.

A little red dot captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)

“The power of a super fun team to uncover the first galaxies and black holes should not be underestimated,” Nelson said.����

Nelson was part of a team that used data from the telescope to discover small, red-tinted spots of light that have since been named little red dots (LRDs).

Research suggests they’re supermassive black holes that are growing.��

Ivo Labbé at the Swinburne University of Technology and Rachel Bezanson at the University of Pittsburgh co-lead the UNCOVER team and will formally accept the award.��

Labbé will give the prize lecture on Jan. 14 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.