NASA's Webb Draws Back Curtain on Universe's Early Galaxies (Labeled)
A long time ago… in galaxies far far away, the first stars were born in the early universe. But when and how? That’s a mystery Webb is one step closer to solving.
Using Webb, researchers have found two early galaxies that are unusually bright, one of which could contain the most distant starlight ever seen. The galaxies are thought to have existed 350 and 450 million years after the big bang (respectively, from top to bottom). Unlike our Milky Way, these first galaxies are small and compact, with spherical or disk shapes rather than grand spirals.
Webb’s new findings suggest that the galaxies would have had to begin coming together about 100 million years after the big bang — meaning that the first stars might have started forming in such galaxies around that time, much earlier than expected.
Follow-up observations with Webb’s spectrographs will confirm the distances of these primordial galaxies and help us learn more about the earliest stars. More: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-draws-back-...
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu (UCLA)
[Image description: Graphic titled “Abell 2744 GLASS; JWST / NIRCam,” with two large square images, one on the left and one on the right, and two smaller images in between, one stacked above the other. The small images are zoom-ins that show details in the large images. The large image on the left shows galaxies of different colors, shapes, and sizes, and several bright foreground stars with Webb’s characteristic diffraction pattern. On the left side of this image is a box around a galaxy, labeled “1”, which zooms in to a red galaxy shown in the top small center pullout image. Image 1 is labeled “z ~ 10.5” to indicate that the galaxy’s redshift is about 10.5. The image on the right also shows galaxies of different colors, shapes, and sizes, but without any prominent diffraction spikes seen in the left image. It includes a box on the left side, labeled “2”, which zooms into a red galaxy, shown in the bottom center image. Pullout image 2 is labeled “z ~ 12.5” to show that the galaxy’s redshift is about 12.5.]
NASA's Webb Draws Back Curtain on Universe's Early Galaxies (Labeled)
A long time ago… in galaxies far far away, the first stars were born in the early universe. But when and how? That’s a mystery Webb is one step closer to solving.
Using Webb, researchers have found two early galaxies that are unusually bright, one of which could contain the most distant starlight ever seen. The galaxies are thought to have existed 350 and 450 million years after the big bang (respectively, from top to bottom). Unlike our Milky Way, these first galaxies are small and compact, with spherical or disk shapes rather than grand spirals.
Webb’s new findings suggest that the galaxies would have had to begin coming together about 100 million years after the big bang — meaning that the first stars might have started forming in such galaxies around that time, much earlier than expected.
Follow-up observations with Webb’s spectrographs will confirm the distances of these primordial galaxies and help us learn more about the earliest stars. More: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-draws-back-...
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu (UCLA)
[Image description: Graphic titled “Abell 2744 GLASS; JWST / NIRCam,” with two large square images, one on the left and one on the right, and two smaller images in between, one stacked above the other. The small images are zoom-ins that show details in the large images. The large image on the left shows galaxies of different colors, shapes, and sizes, and several bright foreground stars with Webb’s characteristic diffraction pattern. On the left side of this image is a box around a galaxy, labeled “1”, which zooms in to a red galaxy shown in the top small center pullout image. Image 1 is labeled “z ~ 10.5” to indicate that the galaxy’s redshift is about 10.5. The image on the right also shows galaxies of different colors, shapes, and sizes, but without any prominent diffraction spikes seen in the left image. It includes a box on the left side, labeled “2”, which zooms into a red galaxy, shown in the bottom center image. Pullout image 2 is labeled “z ~ 12.5” to show that the galaxy’s redshift is about 12.5.]