This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (also called Webb or JWST) was taken by the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, program. The NIRCam data were used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown inset), was found to have a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to less than 300 million years after the big bang. Acknowledgments: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA)
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This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (also called Webb or JWST) was taken by the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, program. The NIRCam data were used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown inset), was found to have a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to less than 300 million years after the big bang. Acknowledgments: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA)
An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of two of the oldest and most distant galaxies ever seen, just 300 million years after the Big Bang. These results, obtained with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), represent a major milestone in the study of the early universe.
The discoveries were made by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) team. Daniel Eisenstein of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) is one of the JADES team leaders and principal investigator of the observing program that discovered these galaxies. Ben Johnson and Phillip Cargile, both research scientists at CfA, and Zihao Wu, Ph.D. A student at CfA, he also played an important role.
Due to the expansion of the universe, light from distant galaxies is stretched to longer wavelengths as it travels. This effect is so extreme for these two galaxies that their ultraviolet light is shifted into infrared wavelengths where only JWST can see them. Since light takes time to travel, the more distant galaxies are also seen as they were before.
The two galaxies of record are called JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1, the former being the more distant of the two. In addition to being the new distance record holder, the JADES-GS-z14-0 is notable for how big and bright it is.
“The size of the galaxy makes it clear that most of the light is produced by a large number of young stars,” said Eisenstein, a Harvard professor and head of the astronomy department, “rather than material falling on the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. a center that would seem much smaller.”
The combination of extreme brightness and the fact that young stars are driving this high luminosity makes JADES-GS-z14-0 the most striking evidence yet found of the rapid formation of large massive galaxies in the early universe.
“JADES-GS-z14-0 is now becoming the archetype of this phenomenon,” says Dr. Stefano Carniani of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, lead author of the discovery. “It’s amazing that the universe can create such a galaxy in just 300 million years.”
Scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to obtain a spectrum of the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 in order to precisely measure its redshift and thus determine its age. The redshift can be determined from a critical wavelength location known as the Lyman-alpha break. This galaxy dates from less than 300 million years after the big bang. Acknowledgments: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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Scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to obtain a spectrum of the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 in order to precisely measure its redshift and thus determine its age. The redshift can be determined from a critical wavelength location known as the Lyman-alpha break. This galaxy dates from less than 300 million years after the big bang. Acknowledgments: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Evidence of surprisingly strong early galaxies also appeared in the first JWST images and increased over the first two years of the mission. This trend contradicts the expectations most astronomers had of galaxy formation theories before the JWST launch.
JADES-GS-z14-0 was a puzzle to the JADES team when it was first spotted more than a year ago because it appears close enough in the sky to the foreground galaxy that the team couldn’t be sure the two weren’t neighbors. But in October 2023, the JADES team took an even deeper image—a full five days with the JWST Near-Infrared Camera in just one field—using filters designed to better isolate the oldest galaxies.
“We didn’t see any plausible way to explain this galaxy as just a closer neighbor,” says Dr. Kevin Hainline, a research professor at the University of Arizona.
The galaxy is located in the field where the JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument made ultra-deep observations. Its brightness at mid-infrared wavelengths is a sign of emission from hydrogen and even oxygen atoms in the early universe.
“Despite being so young, the galaxy is already hard at work creating the elements we know on Earth,” said Zihao Wu, co-author of the second paper on the finding, led by Jakob Helton, a graduate student at the university. from Arizona.
The emboldened team then acquired a spectrum of each galaxy, confirming their hopes that JADES-GS-z14-0 was indeed the galaxy of record, and that a fainter candidate, JADES-GS-z14-1, was almost as far away. .
A third paper led by Brant Robertson, a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Ben Johnson studies the evolution of this early population of galaxies.
“This amazing object shows that galaxy formation in the early universe was very fast and intense,” Johnson said, “and JWST will allow us to find more of these galaxies, perhaps when the universe was even younger. It’s an amazing opportunity to study how galaxies form.”
All three documents are currently available at arXiv prepress server.
More information:
Radiant Cosmic Dawn: Spectroscopic Confirmation of Two Luminous Galaxies vz~14, arXiv:2405.18485 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2405.18485
JWST/MIRI photometric detection of the 7.7 μm stellar continuum and nebular emission in a galaxy at z>14, arXiv:2405.18462 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2405.18462
Brant Robertson et al., The oldest galaxies in the JADES field of origin: The luminosity function and cosmic star formation rate density 300 Myr after the Big Bang, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.10033
Information from the diary:
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