- 3977 - JAMES WEBB - found oldest galaxies. James Webb Space Telescope spots huge galactic protocluster in the early universe,The developing cluster of galaxies existed just 650 million years after the Big Bang and could help answer fundamental questions about the evolution of the universe.
------------ 3977 - JAMES WEBB - found oldest galaxies.
- These
galaxies have been confirmed to be at a distance with a redshift 7.9, which
correlates to 650 million years after the Big Bang.
-
- The cluster
of seven galaxies are seen as they were just 650 million years after the Big
Bang, meaning they make up the youngest so-called "protocluster" ever
seen by astronomers. The protocluster
will eventually grow in mass and size by incorporating galaxies, forming a
galactic cluster that resembles the Coma Cluster.
-
- The
observation of these seven galaxies could help scientists better understand how
the cosmos has evolved over its 13.8-billion-year existence to take the form we
see in the local universe today.
-
- This is a
unique site of accelerated galaxy evolution, and the JWST gave us the
unprecedented ability to measure the velocities of these seven galaxies and
confidently confirm that they are bound together in a protocluster.
-
- The galaxies
are moving at over 2 million mph, about 1,000 times faster than a bullet fired
by a rifle, through a halo of dark matter. The key to doing this and to
determining the distances between the galaxies were precise measurements
captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).
-
- The NIRSpec
data allowed the team to model how the galaxy group develops over time and
build a picture of what this cluster should look like in the modern universe.
They predicted the protocluster will resemble the Coma Cluster, meaning it
could now be one of the densest clusters of galaxies in the cosmos with
thousands of individual member galaxies.
-
- Until the
December 2021 launch of JWST, astronomers had difficulty investigating how
galactic clusters like the Coma Cluster came together in the infant universe.
This is a result of the expansion of the universe stretching the wavelengths of
light leaving these clusters as they travel for billions of years to reach Earth.
-
- This
stretching, or "redshift," causes the light to move down toward the
"red end" of the electromagnetic spectrum. The light traveling from
the earliest galaxies that existed shortly after the Big Bang and came together
to birth the first galactic clusters, has been stretched out into the infrared
portion of the spectrum.
-
- The seven
galaxies studied in this research were selected by the Hubble Space Telescope
as part of the Frontier Fields Program for further investigation by JWST.
Hubble doesn't see deep into the infrared end of the spectrum, limiting the
detail it can glean about these early galaxies. But JWST is well equipped to
study light that's strongly redshifted,
-
- NASA's
forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a wide-field survey mission
that will also observe the cosmos in high-resolution infrared. Able to capture
a field of view 200 times greater than that of Hubble in a single shot,
“Roman”, set to launch in 2027, should be able to spot many more protocluster
candidates for JWST to follow up on for deeper investigation.
-
- It is
amazing the science we can now dream of doing, now that we have the
JWST". With this small
protocluster of seven galaxies, at this great distance, we had a 100%
spectroscopic confirmation rate, demonstrating the future potential for mapping
dark matter and filling in the timeline of the universe's early development.
-
- Much more to
learn about the Universe. And now we
have a new treacher.
-
April 29, 2023 3977
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--------------------- --- Saturday, April 29,
2023 ---------------------------
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