The Webb telescope discovers an ‘amazing’ galaxy at the edge of time

In a recent study submitted MNRASA collaborative research team used the first dataset from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and discovered a galaxy candidate, CEERS-93316, which formed about 250 million years after the Bing Bang, which also set a new redshift record of e.g = 16.7. This result is extremely intriguing as it demonstrates the power of JWST, which only started sending back its first set of data a few weeks ago. CEERS stood for Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey and was specifically designed for imaging with JWST.

“The last few weeks have been surreal seeing all the records that have long been held with Hubble being broken by JWST,” says Dr. Rebecca Bowler, Ernest Rutherford Fellow at the University of Manchester and co-author of the study. “It’s an amazing feeling to find a candidate z=16.7 galaxy – it wasn’t something we expected from the early data.”

This new study links to a dozen previous studies that measured objects down to redshift e.g = 10 using a mix of ground-based observations and with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

“It’s amazing to have already found such a distant candidate galaxy in Webb, considering this is only the first data set,” says Callum Donnan, a Ph.D. Student at the University of Edinburgh and lead author of the study. “It’s important to note that the galaxy needs to track the observations using spectroscopy to be sure of the redshift. That is why we call it a galaxy candidate.”

The study concluded that CEERS-93316 may not be a low-mass star or an unhindered active galactic core, based on image data from NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), JWST’s primary imager. Since CEERS-93316 could be as young as 250 million years old, one goal for cosmologists is to know what’s going on in galaxies so young and so soon after the Big Bang.

“After the Big Bang, the universe entered what is known as the Dark Ages, a time before any stars were born,” explains Bowler. “The observations of this galaxy push the observations back to when we believe the first galaxies that ever existed were formed. We have already found more galaxies in the very early Universe than computer simulations predicted, so there are clearly many unanswered questions about how and when the first stars and galaxies formed.”

Given this incredible finding in just JWST’s first data set, it’s fascinating to think about how much further back in the universe this record-breaking space telescope can see, and whether it can see the Big Bang itself.

“In principle, JWST can detect galaxies at redshifts greater than 20, less than 200 million years after the Big Bang,” explains Bowler. “These galaxies will likely be extremely difficult to find, but the discovery of CERRS 93316 gives us hope that they might exist. Watch this room!”

“The most distant phenomenon observed is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is the ‘afterglow’ of the Big Bang,” explains Donnan. “The light from the CMB dates from about 400,000 years after the Big Bang and has been observed by various instruments over the years – most notably the Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009. Webb won’t be able to see that far back, but it is able to study the earliest stages of galaxy formation.”

While Donnan and Bowler both stated that no further observations are planned for CEERS-93316, they are confident that they will be in the future.

Redshift is part of what is known as the Doppler effect, which astronomers use to measure distances in the universe. A common example to illustrate the Doppler effect is the change in pitch of sound waves when a noisy object approaches you and then moves away from you, often with an ambulance or other first responder vehicle. The sound waves as the object moves towards you is called the blueshift, while the opposite is called the redshift. This new study set a new redshift record, meaning scientists have measured the most distant object in the universe to date.

This article was originally published on universe today by Laurence Tognetti. Read the original article here.