The light that has traveled over 13.4 billion years to reach our nearest universe has been confirmed to originate from the oldest and most distant galaxies ever detected.
The most distant of these four very young bodies is at the very dawn of the universe, just after the Big Bang, when the universe was still shrouded in fog and the first rays were penetrating the darkness. It’s time.
is very detailed JWSTMoreResearchers can not only measure the distance traveled by light in these galaxies, but also infer some of their properties.
“For the first time, we discovered a galaxy just 350 million years after the Big Bang. We have absolute confidence in its incredible distance.” Astronomer Brant Robertson says From the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Finding these early galaxies in such stunningly beautiful images is a special experience.”
Being able to peer into space as never before is one of JWST’s greatest ambitions. Our understanding of his first billion years after the Big Bang is extremely limited.
We have a model that describes how events unfolded. Before the first stars were born, the universe was filled with opaque matter. Light was scattered from free electrons and could not flow freely.
These particles gradually combine to form neutral hydrogen. As stars began to form, the hydrogen ionized and the light glowed. This process was completed about 1 billion years after the universe was born.
The light from these objects is very weak and comes from very far away. And the expansion of the universe has significantly stretched it to the longer, redder end of the spectrum, a phenomenon known as redshift.
JWST is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space, specializing in the infrared and near-infrared, and designed to detect as much of this redshifted light as possible.
To get a solid redshift, we need to decompose the light into its constituent wavelengths. This is a technique known as spectroscopy. The research team decomposed the light from JWST’s NIRCam into nine wavelength ranges and focused on four high-redshift galaxies. Two of which he was first identified by Hubble.
The new JWST data confirms that these two galaxies are indeed among the most distant galaxies ever detected, and that the other two are even more distant.
“It was very important to prove that these galaxies were indeed inhabiting the early Universe. It is very possible that closer galaxies masquerade as very distant galaxies.” Astronomer Emma Curtis-Lake says University of Hertfordshire, England.
“Looking at the spectra revealed just as we had hoped, we confirmed that these galaxies are at the true edge of our field of view, further away than Hubble can see! This is a very exciting achievement for our mission.”
The two Hubble galaxies are at redshifts 10.38 and 11.58. New discoveries in JWST have redshifts of 12.63 and 13.20. The latter is equivalent to about 13.5 billion light years.
Other candidates with higher redshifts are currently under investigation, but have yet to be confirmed. Considering JWST has been operational for less than six months, it won’t take long for the record to be broken.
But there’s a lot to do in the meantime. Observations that provided these distant galaxies as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) collected a total of 28 hours of data from the famous galaxies and their surrounding regions of space. Hubble ultradeep space.
This light will tell us a lot about the state of the early universe and how the first stars and galaxies formed.
“These measurements allow us to know the intrinsic brightness of galaxies, and to find out how many stars they have. robertson says.
“Now we can really start looking at how galaxies fit together over time.”
The researchers will present their findings at STScI. First scientific results from JWST meeting. You can read two preprint papers here When here.
