The oldest known galaxies detected by the James Webb Space Telescope
A group of international astronomers has used data from the James Webb Space Telescope to report the discovery of the first confirmed galaxies to date.
In the work, which NASA noted has not yet been peer-reviewed, scientists found that light from these galaxies has taken more than 13.4 billion years to reach Earth because the galaxies date back less than 400 million years after the Big Bang.
Previous Webb data had provided candidates for infant galaxies, and the targets have been confirmed by obtaining spectroscopic observations.
These observations revealed characteristic and distinctive patterns in the light emitted by faint galaxies.
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The Webb Advanced Deep Extragactic Survey (JADES) focused on the area in and around the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field. Using Webb’s NIRCam instrument, the scientists observed the field in nine different infrared wavelength ranges. From these images (shown at left), the team looked for faint galaxies that are visible in the infrared but whose spectra cut off sharply at a critical wavelength known as the “break by Lyman.” Webb’s NIRSpec instrument then gave a precise measurement of the redshift of each galaxy (shown at right). Four of the galaxies studied are particularly special, as they were revealed to be at an unprecedented time. These galaxies date back less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age. In the background image, blue represents light at 1.15 microns (115 W), green is 2.0 microns (200 W), and red is 4.44 microns (444 W). In the cropped images, blue is a combination of 0.9 and 1.15 microns (090W+115W), green is 1.5 and 2.0 microns (150W+200W), and red is 2.0 , 2.77 and 4.44 microns (200W+277W+444W).
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), L. Hustak (STScI) Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore) and the JADES Collaboration)
Using observations from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program, the observations focused on the area in and around the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field.
Starting with the telescope’s near-infrared cameraor NIRCam, the JADES program used more than 10 days of mission time to observe the field in nine different infrared colors.
In the images, the youngest galaxies can be distinguished by light stretched in wavelength by a factor of up to 14.
GREENBELT, MD – NOVEMBER 2: Engineers and technicians assemble the James Webb Space Telescope on November 2, 2016 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images))
NASA said astronomers searched for faint galaxies that are visible in the infrared but whose light is cut off sharply at a critical wavelength.
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The agency noted that the location of the cutoff within each galaxy’s spectrum is shifted by the expansion of the universe.
Then, using the Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument over three days, the team collected light from 250 faint galaxies, with the resulting study of patterns in the spectrum of atoms in each galaxy a precise measurement of the redshift of each galaxy and revealed the properties. of the gas and stars of these galaxies.
This image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope highlights the study region of the Webb Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). This area is in and around the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field. Scientists used Webb’s NIRCam instrument to observe the field in nine different infrared wavelength ranges. From these images, the team looked for faint galaxies that are visible in the infrared but whose spectra cut off sharply at a critical wavelength. They conducted additional observations (not shown here) with Webb’s NIRSpec instrument to measure the redshift of each galaxy and reveal the properties of the gas and stars in those galaxies. In this image, blue represents light at 1.15 microns (115 W), green is 2.0 microns (200 W), and red is 4.44 microns (444 W).
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani ( School) Superior Normal), and the JADES Collaboration.)
Four of the galaxies were revealed to be unprecedented, located at redshifts above 10, or when the universe was approximately 330 million years old.
“For the first time, we’ve discovered galaxies just 350 million years after the Big Bang, and we can be absolutely sure of their fantastic distances,” co-author Brant Robertson of the University of California Santa Cruz and member of the NIRCam. scientific team, he said. “Finding these early galaxies in such incredibly beautiful images is a special experience.”
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Next year, JADES will continue with a detailed study of another field, this one focused on the iconic Hubble Deep Field.
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