Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope in a patch of the sky covering almost three times the area of the full moon, scientists have created the most detailed cosmic map to date of the mysterious substance called dark matter that accounts for most of the stuff that populates the universe.

Ordinary matter makes up stars, planets, people and everything else we can see. But it represents only about 15 per cent of all the matter in the cosmos. The rest is dark matter, which does not emit or reflect light, making it invisible to the human eye and to telescopes.

Scientists infer its existence based on the gravitational effects it exerts on a large scale such as how quickly galaxies rotate, how galaxy clusters are held together and how light from distant objects bends as it passes through massive cosmic structures.