Looking halfway across the observable universe and expecting to see individual stars is considered a non-starter in astronomy, a bit like raising a pair of binoculars at the moon in hopes of making out individual grains of dust inside its craters.

While the extra-galactic stars provided a microlensing effect, large clusters of dark matter provided a macrolensing effect.

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have observed a galaxy nearly 6.5 billion light-years from Earth, and identified 44 individual stars.