Washington: The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered an incredible star system that existed 290 million years after the Big Bang, in what appears to be a new record for the largest galaxy, NASA said on Thursday.
With the Webb Telescope coming online in 2022, it has ushered in a new era of scientific discovery, looking further into the universe than ever before – and that means going back in time.
The latest discovery has “profound implications” for our understanding of the so-called “Cosmic Dawn,” the researchers said.
An international team of astronomers spotted JADES-GS-z14-0 for the first time in early 2023, but further observations are needed to confirm that it really is a “record-setter,” the joint statement said. .
Stefano Carniani from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy said: “The source is surprisingly bright, you would expect it to be a galaxy so far away, and it is so close to another galaxy that the two appear to be part of one large object.” and Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona.
The team conducted confirmatory observations in October and then in January – first with Webb’s primary imager, NIRCam, and second with NIRSpec, which analyzes the light spectrum of an object to determine its physical properties.
JADES-GS-z14-0 beat the previous record for the oldest galaxy held by JADES-GS-z13-0, which existed 320 million years after the Big Bang.
After her age was confirmed in January, she said: “I had to get away from my computer, it was so funny to see that.”
“The most important aspect of JADES-GS-z14-0 is that, for the time being, we know that this galaxy must be very bright internally,” Carniani and Hainline said.
From the images, the galaxy was determined to be 1,600 light-years away, suggesting that the light comes from a young star rather than from an expanding supermassive black hole.
“That starlight means that the galaxy is several hundred million times the mass of the Sun!” said the researchers. “This begs the question: How can nature create such a bright, massive and massive galaxy in less than 300 million years?”
A more detailed analysis of the light emission showed the presence of oxygen, which “probably lived before many generations of massive stars were observed in the galaxy.”
The discovery of JADES-GS-z14-0 raises astronomical expectations about what the earliest galaxies looked like after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Given the relatively small part of the night sky that can be observed, bright galaxies may be found earlier in the coming year, say the researchers, who will now publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. .
