HIDDEN STARS SUGGEST THAT DISTANT GALAXIES ARE MORE MASSIVE THAN THEY APPEAR

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Aug. 21 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Astronomers have discovered that the most massive galaxies in the early universe contain far more small stars than expected. As a result, these early galaxies were likely much more massive than initial measurements suggested. This discovery, which involved Penn State scientists, challenges current understanding about how the first galaxies formed. The results were recently published in Nature Astronomy.

An international team of researchers leveraged NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to make this discovery. The team studied nine massive, mature galaxies that ceased forming stars billions of years ago by combining...