NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the most distant galaxy ever discovered. Some date back to just 300 million years after the universe was born in the big bang, when the universe was only 2% of its present age.
The protogalaxy was discovered by an international team of scientists responsible for the design of two of JWST’s most advanced instruments. The first instrument, known as the near-infrared camera (NIRCam), was tasked with observing a small portion of the constellation’s night sky.
Over a period of 10 days, NIRCam observed light emitted from a cluster of nearly 100,000 galaxies across nine infrared wavelength ranges. From this dataset, astronomers isolated 250 of the faintest and reddest galaxies and targeted them with another JWST instrument, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).
NIRSpec is designed to collect the light emitted by a celestial body and decompose it into its constituent colors. This process creates a rainbow-like graph called a spectrum. Astronomers can analyze a galaxy’s spectrum to discover everything from its elemental composition to the number of stars in it and even its distance from Earth.
The latter is done by measuring a phenomenon known as redshift. Light emitted from very distant galaxies can take billions of years to reach Earth. During this time, the wavelength of that light stretches and lengthens, slowly moving into the “redder” part of the light spectrum.
As light travels from its source toward Earth, it inevitably passes through huge clouds of interstellar dust and gas. is known, but other wavelengths can pass relatively unhindered. This interference creates distinct patterns in the rainbow spectrum.
Illustration showing galaxies and their redshift locations (Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, Rolf A. Jansen (ASU), Jake Summers (ASU), Rosalia O’Brien (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU) , Aaron Robotham (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Christopher Willmer (University of Arizona), JWST PEARLS Team. Image processing: Rolf A. Jansen (ASU), Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
Scientists have been able to figure out the ages and distances of distant galaxies by observing how much their spectral patterns have shifted from their expected locations as a result of redshifts.
Using this technique, scientists discovered four astonishingly old galaxies lurking within the JWST data. They are believed to have formed just 300 million years after the universe was created in the Big Bang. This means he is 100 million years younger than the oldest galaxy discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope.
This means that the light detected by JWST left its source about 13.4 billion years ago, when the universe was only 2% of its present age. The record-breaking age of the galaxy will be invaluable to scientists trying to unlock the secrets of the early universe’s evolution.
“It’s difficult to understand a galaxy without understanding its early stages of development,” explained University of Cambridge astronomer Sandro Takkera, who co-authored the study describing the results. University of Arizona). “Like humans, much of what happens later depends on the influence of these early generation stars.”
“So many questions about the galaxy await Webb’s innovative opportunity, and I’m thrilled to be a part of uncovering this story.”
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Image Credit: Northrop Grumman.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video game news for IGN. With his 8+ years of experience covering the latest developments in multiple scientific fields, he has absolutely no time for cheating. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
