A group of international astronomers have used data from the James Webb Space Telescope to report the discovery of the first confirmed galaxies to date.
In work, which NASA says has yet to be peer-reviewed, scientists found that light from these galaxies took more than 13.4 billion years to reach Earth, as the galaxies date back less than 400 million years after the Big Bang.
Previous Webb data had provided candidates for nascent galaxies and the targets were confirmed by obtaining spectroscopic observations.
These observations revealed characteristic and distinctive patterns in the light emitted by faint galaxies.
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The Webb Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) focused on the area in and around the ultra-deep field of the Hubble Space Telescope. Using Webb’s NIRCam instrument, the scientists observed the field in nine different infrared wavelength ranges. From these images (shown on the left), the team searched for faint galaxies visible in the infrared but whose spectra abruptly cut off at a critical wavelength known as the “Lyman break”. Webb’s NIRSpec instrument then provided an accurate measurement of each galaxy’s redshift (shown right). Four of the galaxies studied are particularly special, as they were found to be at an unprecedented time. These galaxies date back less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age. In the background image, blue represents light at 1.15 microns (115 W), green at 2.0 microns (200 W), and red at 4.44 microns (444 W). In the cutout images, blue is a combination of 0.9 and 1.15 microns (090W+115W), green is 1.5 and 2.0 microns (150W+200W), and red is 2.0 , 2.77 and 4.44 microns (200W+277W+444W).
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), L. Hustak (STScI). Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake ( Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore) and the JADES collaboration)
Using observations from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program, the observations focused on the area in and around the ultra-deep field of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Starting with the telescope’s near infrared camera, or NIRCam, the JADES program used more than 10 days of mission time to observe the field in nine different infrared colors.
In the images, the youngest galaxies are distinguished by the light stretched in wavelength up to a factor of 14.
GREENBELT, MD – NOVEMBER 02: Engineers and technicians assemble the James Webb Space Telescope on November 2, 2016 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images))
NASA said astronomers are looking for faint galaxies that are visible in the infrared but whose light abruptly cuts off at a critical wavelength.
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The agency noted that the location of the cutoff in each galaxy’s spectrum is shifted by the expansion of the universe.
Then, using the Near Infrared Spectrograph instrument for three days, the team collected light from 250 faint galaxies, with a study of the patterns on the spectrum by the atoms of each galaxy, which allowed to accurately measure the redshift of each galaxy and reveal the properties of gas and stars in these galaxies.
This image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope highlights the region studied by the Webb Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). This area is found in and around the ultra deep field of the Hubble Space Telescope. The scientists used Webb’s NIRCam instrument to observe the field in nine different infrared wavelength ranges. From these images, the team looked for faint galaxies visible in the infrared but whose spectra cut off abruptly at a critical wavelength. They made additional observations (not shown here) with Webb’s NIRspec instrument to measure the redshift of each galaxy and reveal the properties of gas and stars in those galaxies. In this image, blue represents light at 1.15 microns (115W), green at 2.0 microns (200W), and red at 4.44 microns (444W).
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Higher School Normal) and the JADES Collaboration.)
Four of the galaxies were found to be unprecedentedly early, being at redshifts greater than 10, or when the universe was around 330 million years old.
“For the first time, we have discovered galaxies only 350 million years after the Big Bang, and we can be absolutely sure of their fantastic distances,” said co-author Brant Robertson, of the University of California at Santa Cruz and member of NIRCam. scientific team, said. “Finding these first galaxies in images of such breathtaking beauty is a special experience.”
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Next year, JADES will continue the detailed study of another field, this one centered on the iconic Hubble Deep Field.
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