The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been observing what astronomers are calling the “cosmic dawn” for the past two years, capturing what scientists believe to be the most distant galaxy known.
“Cosmic dawn” refers to the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first galaxies were born, NASA said in a press release.
According to NASA, these galaxies will give scientists insight into how gas, stars, and black holes changed in the early days of the universe.
An international team of astronomers used the Webb Telescope to observe the galaxy in October 2023 and January 2024 as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JAMES) program.
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Scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to obtain a spectrum of the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 and precisely measure its redshift to determine its age. Redshift can be determined from the location of a critical wavelength called the Lyman-alpha break. The galaxy dates back less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI). Science: S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), JADES Collaboration.)
During that time, the team collected spectra of what NASA called a record-breaking galaxy, dating back just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
The spectrum is measured by how much a galaxy’s light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe, and for the most distant known galaxies, the redshift has been measured to be about 14.
Two of the team’s astronomers, Stefano Carniani of the École Normale Supérieure in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, told NASA that in January 2024, Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) observed the galaxy known to astronomers as JADES-GS-z14-0 for nearly 10 hours.
Scientists say the Webb Telescope has discovered the merging of two massive black holes in the early universe.
NIRCam data was used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout), is the current record holder for the most distant known galaxy, determined to have a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), which corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI). Science: S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), JADES Collaboration.)
According to the astronomers, when they first processed the spectrum, there was clear evidence that the galaxy has a redshift of 14.32, which would break the previous record for the most distant galaxy, held by JADES-GS-z13-0 at 13.2.
The discovery of the spectrum was “incredibly exciting” for the entire team because of the mystery surrounding its source, and what’s most interesting about the galaxy is how bright it was from such a great distance, they said.
The galaxy’s diameter is estimated to be more than 1,600 light-years, and its light is thought to come from young stars rather than radiation from a growing supermassive black hole.
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The one-year anniversary image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures star-birth in unprecedented detail and impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchus Nebula complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It’s a relatively small and quiet nursery of stars, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets erupting from the young star crisscross the image, slamming into the surrounding interstellar gas and illuminating molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars show the distinctive shadows of circumstellar disks that will form future planetary systems. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI))
Astronomers say the star’s light suggests the galaxy is hundreds of millions of times more massive than our sun, further deepening the mystery of how such a bright and massive galaxy could have formed in less than 300 million years.
Through the data, astronomers learned that the galaxy’s color is reddened by dust and is not as blue as it was in its early stages.
Wavelengths of light collected by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) indicated that the source’s brightness was higher than inferred from measurements by the telescope’s other instruments, suggesting the presence of ionized gas emissions from hydrogen and oxygen.
Astronomers say the presence of oxygen at such an early stage suggests that several generations of massive stars had already died before telescopes were able to observe the galaxy.
“Taken together, these observations show that JADES-GS-z14-0 is different from the type of galaxy predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the early universe,” the astronomers said in a press release. “The observed brightness of the source allows us to predict how it will grow over cosmic time. So far, we have found no similarities to the hundreds of other galaxies we have observed at high redshifts in the survey.”
“We expect that astronomers will discover many more such luminous galaxies over the next decade, possibly even older, thanks to Webb’s observations,” the team added. “We are thrilled to see the extraordinary diversity of galaxies that existed in Cosmic Dawn!”
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NASA said the discovery is still under investigation and has not gone through the peer review process.
The Webb Telescope is the successor to Hubble and the largest telescope ever launched into space, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency.
