The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries of the observable Universe closer to cosmic dawn with the confirmation of a bright galaxy that existed 280 million years after the Big Bang.
By now Webb has established that it will eventually surpass virtually every benchmark it sets in these early years, but the newly confirmed galaxy, MoM-z14, holds intriguing clues to the Universe’s historical timeline and just how different a place the early Universe was than astronomers expected.
“With Webb, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted, which is both challenging and exciting,” said Rohan Naidu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, lead author of a paper on galaxy MoM-z14 published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
Due to the expansion of the Universe that is driven by dark energy, discussion of physical distances and “years ago” becomes tricky when looking this far. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers confirmed that MoM-z14 has a cosmological redshift [1] of 14.44, meaning that its light has been travelling through (expanding) space, being stretched and “shifted” to longer, redder wavelengths, for about 13.5 of the Universe’s estimated 13.8 billion years of existence.
“We can estimate the distance of galaxies from images, but it’s really important to follow up and confirm with more detailed spectroscopy so that we know exactly what we are seeing, and when,” said Pascal Oesch of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, co-principal investigator of the survey.
Intriguing features
MoM-z14 is one of a growing group of surprisingly bright galaxies in the early Universe – 100 times more than theoretical studies predicted before the launch of Webb, according to the research team.
“There is a growing chasm between theory and observation related to the early Universe, which presents compelling questions to be explored going forward,” said Jacob Shen, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and a member of the research team.
One place researchers and theorists can look for answers is the oldest population of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. A small percentage of these stars have shown high amounts of nitrogen, which is also showing up in some of Webb’s observations of early galaxies, including MoM-z14.
“We can take a page from archeology and look at these ancient stars in our own galaxy like fossils from the early Universe, except in astronomy we are lucky enough to have Webb seeing so far that we also have direct information about galaxies during that time. It turns out we are seeing some of the same features, like this unusual nitrogen enrichment,” said Naidu.
With galaxy MoM-z14 existing only 280 million years after the big bang, there was not enough time for generations of stars to produce such high amounts of nitrogen in the way that astronomers would expect. One theory the researchers note is that the dense environment of the early Universe resulted in supermassive stars capable of producing more nitrogen than any stars observed in the local Universe.
The galaxy MoM-z14 also shows signs of clearing out the thick, primordial hydrogen fog of the early Universe in the space around itself. One of the reasons Webb was originally built was to define the timeline for this “clearing” period of cosmic history, which astronomers call reionization. This is when early stars produced light of high enough energy to break through the dense hydrogen gas of the early Universe and begin travelling through space, eventually making its way to Webb, and us. Galaxy MoM-z14 provides another clue for mapping out the timeline of reionization, work that was not possible until Webb lifted the veil on this era of the Universe.
Legacy of discovery continues
Even before Webb’s launch, there were hints that something very unanticipated happened in the early Universe, when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope discovered the bright galaxy GN-z11 400 million years after the big bang. Webb confirmed the galaxy’s distance — at the time the most distant ever. From there Webb has continued to push back farther and farther in space and time, finding more surprisingly bright galaxies like GN-z11.
As Webb continues to uncover more of these unexpectedly luminous galaxies, it’s clear that the first few were not a fluke. “It’s an incredibly exciting time, with Webb revealing the early Universe like never before and showing us how much there still is to discover” added Yijia Li, a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University and a member of the research team.
Notes
[1] The Universe is expanding, and that expansion stretches light traveling through space in a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. The greater the redshift, the greater the distance the light has traveled.
COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam pullout image)
The galaxy designated MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy ever detected, spotted by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and confirmed spectroscopically with its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument.
Through Webb, we are seeing this galaxy as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the Universe began in the big bang. Its light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to reach us.
Like some other galaxies Webb has discovered in the early Universe, MoM-z14 is brighter, more compact, and more chemically enriched than astronomers expected to find in this early era. While it may pass out of record books quickly as the farthest galaxy, MoM-z14 will still play a role in helping astronomers and theorists reach new understanding of the earliest chapters in the Universe’s story.
[Image description: A wide field of view showing deep space, dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display six diffraction spikes. One galaxy is highlighted with a magnified image in a graphic pull-out box in the lower right corner. The galaxy is labeled MoM-z14 and appears as a blurry yellow blob with a small red area at its top.]
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Naidu (MIT), Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam compass image)
This image of the COSMOS Legacy Field captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) highlights the galaxy MoM-z14, with compass arrows and colour key for reference. MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy Webb has detected.
The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).
This image shows near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colours. The colour key shows which NIRCam filters were used. The colour of each filter name is the visible-light colour used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.
[Image description: A wide field of view showing deep space, dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display six diffraction spikes. One galaxy is highlighted with a magnified image in a graphic pull-out box in the lower right corner. The galaxy is labeled MoM-z14 and appears as a blurry yellow blob with a small red area at its top. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter.]
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Naidu (MIT), Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
COSMOS Field (NIRCam clean image)
This image shows the COSMOS field, where the galaxy MoM-z14 resides.
The galaxy designated MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy ever detected, spotted by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and confirmed spectroscopically with its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument.
Through Webb, we are seeing this galaxy as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the Universe began in the big bang. Its light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to reach us.
Like some other galaxies Webb has discovered in the early Universe, MoM-z14 is brighter, more compact, and more chemically enriched than astronomers expected to find in this early era. While it may pass out of record books quickly as the farthest galaxy, MoM-z14 will still play a role in helping astronomers and theorists reach new understanding of the earliest chapters in the Universe’s story.
[Image description: A wide field of view showing deep space, dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display six diffraction spikes.]
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Naidu (MIT), Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
VIDEOS
Pan video: COSMOS Field (NIRCam image)
This image shows the COSMOS field, where the galaxy MoM-z14 resides.
The galaxy designated MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy ever detected, spotted by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and confirmed spectroscopically with its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument.
Through Webb, we are seeing this galaxy as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the Universe began in the big bang. Its light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to reach us.
Like some other galaxies Webb has discovered in the early Universe, MoM-z14 is brighter, more compact, and more chemically enriched than astronomers expected to find in this early era. While it may pass out of record books quickly as the farthest galaxy, MoM-z14 will still play a role in helping astronomers and theorists reach new understanding of the earliest chapters in the Universe’s story..
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Naidu (MIT), J. DePasquale (STScI), N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Music: Stellardrone - Twilight
Location of MoM-z14 in COSMOS field
The galaxy designated MoM-z14 is currently the farthest galaxy ever detected, spotted by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and confirmed spectroscopically with its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument. This video shows its location in the COSMOS field.
Through Webb, we are seeing this galaxy as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the Universe began in the big bang. Its light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to reach us.
Like some other galaxies Webb has discovered in the early Universe, MoM-z14 is brighter, more compact, and more chemically enriched than astronomers expected to find in this early era. While it may pass out of record books quickly as the farthest galaxy, MoM-z14 will still play a role in helping astronomers and theorists reach new understanding of the earliest chapters in the Universe’s story.
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Naidu (MIT), J. DePasquale (STScI), N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Music: Stellardrone - The Night Sky in Motion
JADES: GOODS South fly-through visualization
This video is a 3D visualization of galaxies observed with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES.
This visualization includes 9,500 galaxies from a portion of the JADES image that covers the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) South field.
At the beginning of this video, we fly by galaxies in the nearby Universe. Here, galaxies appear larger and more defined in structure. As we pass them, we see more distant galaxies, which appear more distorted and smaller in size.
The video ends on the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0. This galaxy has a redshift of 14.32, making it the current record-holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the big bang.
Credit:
Visualization: C. Nieves (STScI), F. Summers (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI), G. Bacon (STScI); Science: JADES Team, K. Hainline (University of Arizona)
Fuente: ESA/Hubble/Webb Information Centre
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