James Webb captures the first galaxies in the Universe. You are looking at an image of when the Universe was still a baby, when it was only 2 billion years old, 12 billion years ago. The James Webb Space Telescope has managed to capture the first Galaxies in the Universe.
The discovery is a graphic example of the unparalleled clarity that the JWST telescope provides when studying the early universe. The quality of the data from the James Webb Telescope is exceptional. It has the depth and resolution necessary to see the neighbors and surroundings of early galaxies when the universe was only 2 billion years old.
James Webb captures the first galaxies in the universe
New images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have helped unlock secrets of how young galaxies triggered a burst of star formation in the early universe. Some early galaxies were rich in gas that shone so brightly that it outshone the emerging stars. In new research, astronomers have discovered how prevalent these bright galaxies were about 12 billion years ago. JWST images have shown that almost 90% of galaxies in the early universe had this bright gas, producing so-called “extreme emission line features.”
“The stars in these young galaxies were remarkable and produced just the right amount of radiation to excite the surrounding gas. This gas, in turn, shone even brighter than the stars themselves,” says Dr. Anshu Gupta, from the Center of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and the Curtin University node of the Centre, in a statement. International Radio Astronomy Research Institute (ICRAR), lead author of a paper describing the discovery.
The passage of the first galaxies
The discovery is a graphic example of the unparalleled clarity that the JWST telescope provides when studying the early universe. “The quality of the data from the James Webb telescope is exceptional,” says Dr. Gupta. “It has the depth and resolution necessary to see neighboring galaxies and the environment around the first galaxies when the universe was only 2 billion years old. With this detail, we were able to see a marked difference in the number of neighbors between galaxies with extreme emission characteristics and those that do not.”
We previously struggled to get a clear picture of the around 2 billion-year-old galaxies in the universe. Since there were still many stars to form, the task was made more difficult by having many fewer galaxies to focus on. “Before JWST, we could only image massive galaxies, most of which are in very dense clusters, making them more difficult to study,” says Dr. Gupta. “With the technology available then, we were not able to observe 95% of the galaxies that we used in this study. “The James Webb Telescope has revolutionized our work.”
This story was written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Ecoosfera
