Wagons full of broom corn arriving in downtown Woodward, Oklahoma, c. 1910
Broom corn grew exceptionally well in Oklahoma, and the state led the nation in production from 1915 until 1946.
(19589.131.3, Alvin Rucker Collection, OHS
James Webb just broke yet another record!
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the largest and deepest sample of galaxy groups ever recorded in a single image – a stunning view featuring 1,678 galaxy groups, some as far as 12 billion light-years away. That’s just 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang.
This astonishing deep field comes from a small patch of sky in the constellation Sextans, just beyond Leo. While it may look like a peaceful sea of light, what you’re seeing is anything but still. These galaxies are moving, merging, colliding, and forming stars at furious rates.
What makes this image truly groundbreaking is that it’s not just a collection of individual galaxies. These are gravitationally bound groups – families of galaxies orbiting a common center of gravity, shaped by the invisible scaffolding of dark matter. Just as planets orbit stars and stars orbit galactic centers, entire galaxies orbit each other in these massive cosmic clusters.
Why does it matter? Because these groupings hold clues to how the universe evolved over billions of years. Galaxies in the early universe looked very different – chaotic, irregular, and bursting with new stars. Over time, interactions and mergers transformed many of them into the structured spirals and ellipticals we see today. Studying them helps astronomers understand everything from galactic evolution to the nature of supermassive black holes and intergalactic gas.
The image was taken as part of the COSMOS-Web survey, the largest observing program of Webb’s first year. It builds on the legacy of Hubble’s deep fields – but goes even further, both in depth and in infrared precision.