A viral post says the James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a glowing question mark in deep space. The image is real, but it is a crop from a Webb picture of the young star pair Herbig-Haro 46/47 published on 26 July 2023. Scientists think the question mark is probably two distant galaxies merging, but its distance has never been measured, so “giant” is a guess. In 2024 Webb found a second question mark that is explained: a galaxy pair magnified and shown five times by a cluster’s gravity.
2023image released (26 July), not new
?distance of the question mark: not measured
5×second question mark (2024): one galaxy pair seen five times
A giant question mark in deep space? What the viral post leaves out
A post shared widely this week says NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a glowing object shaped almost exactly like a question mark. The picture is real. It is a crop from a Webb image published on 26 July 2023, so it is more than three years old, not a new discovery.
The full image shows Herbig-Haro 46/47, a pair of very young stars about 1,470 light-years away in the southern constellation Vela. The stars are only a few thousand years old and still growing inside a disk of gas and dust; their jets make the orange lobes that fill the frame. The question mark sits just below them, far in the background.
So what is the question mark?
Nobody knows for sure yet. The Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs Webb’s science operations, said it is “probably a distant galaxy, or potentially interacting galaxies”. Christopher Britt of STScI, who helped plan the observation, said his best guess is two merging galaxies: the two brighter spots in the curve and the dot may be their cores, and the curve may be a tail of stars pulled out as they spiral together.
It is not a star: a star would show Webb’s eight-pointed diffraction spikes, as Matt Caplan of Illinois State University pointed out. Its red colour suggests it is very far away, possibly billions of light-years, but dust can also redden a nearer object. Its distance has not been measured, so its real size is unknown too, and the word “giant” in the post is a guess.
ImageWebb NIRCam, released 26 July 2023
ForegroundHerbig-Haro 46/47, young star pair
Distance of the stars≈ 1,470 light-years (Vela)
The “question mark”background galaxy or merging pair
Its distancenot measured yet
Second question markMACS J0417.5-1154, Sept 2024
Two cosmic question marks, two different causes
Original Astrometrik animation, simplified and not to scale. Left: the 2023 question mark behind Herbig-Haro 46/47 as two galaxies that may be merging, one torn into a curved tail (the most likely explanation, not yet confirmed). Right: the 2024 question mark, where the mass of the galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154 bends the light of one galaxy pair into five images; an unrelated galaxy makes the dot.
Webb has found a second question mark, and this one is explained
In September 2024 Webb photographed another question mark, this time in the galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154 in Eridanus, about 5 billion light-years away. Here the cause is known: the cluster’s mass bends space-time and acts as a lens, magnifying a pair of galaxies behind it and showing them five times. Four of these images trace the curve of the question mark; an unrelated galaxy happens to form the dot.
The pair, a face-on spiral and a dusty red galaxy seen edge-on, is seen as it was about 7 billion years ago, with roughly the mass our Milky Way had then. Guillaume Desprez of Saint Mary’s University in Canada said only three or four similar lens configurations are known. The dusty galaxy is invisible to Hubble and shows up only in Webb’s infrared images.
Why do we keep seeing shapes in space?
Our brains are built to find familiar patterns, a habit called pareidolia; it is why we see faces in clouds. In a deep Webb image thousands of galaxies, many of them distorted by collisions or by lensing, sit side by side, so a curve and a dot lining up into a question mark is not as unlikely as it looks.
To settle what the 2023 question mark is, astronomers would need its spectrum, which gives the redshift and so the distance. Until then the honest answer to the question mark is still a question mark.
Watch: the cosmic question mark in under a minute
Our short animated video explains what the question mark is, and why there are two.
Fact check: the viral post
Claims from the widely shared post, checked:
Correct“Webb captured an object shaped like a question mark”Yes: it is in the background of the Herbig-Haro 46/47 image.
MisleadingShared as if it were newThe image was published on 26 July 2023. The post does say “first revealed in 2023”, but the headline presents it as news.
Partly right“NASA’s James Webb telescope”Webb is a joint mission of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.
Partly right“Believed to be two distant galaxies interacting”A plausible guess by STScI scientists, not a confirmed result: no spectrum has been taken.
Misleading“A giant object”Its distance is unknown, so its size is unknown too.
Correct“In the background of Herbig-Haro 46/47, a pair of young stars”Correct: about 1,470 light-years away, in Vela.
The two question marks side by side
2023
2024
Where
behind Herbig-Haro 46/47 (Vela)
galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154 (Eridanus)
What makes the shape
probably two merging galaxies
gravitational lensing: one galaxy pair seen five times
Distance
not measured
light left ≈ 7 billion years ago
Status
unconfirmed
explained, studied with spectra
Explore the scale of the universe
Herbig-Haro 46/47 lies in Vela, too far south to rise from Central Europe and most of Türkiye, and the galaxy cluster in Eridanus is invisible to the eye. On our Explore page you can compare distances, sizes and speeds, from the nearest stars to galaxies billions of light-years away.
Did the James Webb telescope find a question mark in space?
Yes. A question-mark-shaped object appears in the background of Webb’s image of Herbig-Haro 46/47, published on 26 July 2023. The viral post in October 2026 shows a crop of that older image.
What is the question mark in the Webb image?
Most likely a distant galaxy or two interacting galaxies, one stretched into a curved tail. This has not been confirmed, because its spectrum and distance have not been measured.
How far away is the question mark?
Unknown. Its red colour suggests great distance, possibly billions of light-years, but dust could also redden a closer object. The young stars in front of it are about 1,470 light-years away.
Is there another question mark in space?
Yes. In 2024 Webb found one in the galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154: a gravitationally lensed pair of galaxies seen five times, with an unrelated galaxy as the dot. Its light left about 7 billion years ago.
Sources and calculation
Sources: STScI/NASA, Herbig-Haro 46/47 NIRCam image (26 July 2023; image processing Joseph DePasquale, STScI); Space.com (28 July 2023), with comments from STScI and Matt Caplan (Illinois State University); National Geographic (August 2023), Christopher Britt (STScI) and David Helfand (Columbia University); Snopes; ESA/Webb image “questionmark1” and NASA release (4 September 2024); Sci.News (5 September 2024), quotes from Guillaume Desprez, Marcin Sawicki and Vicente Estrada-Carpenter (Saint Mary’s University).
Positions and times were recalculated with Astronomy Engine, the sky-calculation library Astrometrik uses; times for Vienna and Istanbul are local time. The artwork on this page was drawn by Astrometrik.