A research team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities used the James Webb Space Telescope to perform the first observations of their kind.
Tiny Galaxy From the Distant Past
According to EurekAlert, the team used the JWST to probe over 13 billion years into the past. There, they discovered a distinct and puny galaxy that had a remarkable rate of star formation, considering its tiny size. The paper was included in the Science journal.
This galaxy is reportedly one of the tiniest ever found at such a distance, roughly 500 million years after the Big Bang took place. Its discovery could aid astronomers in learning more about the galaxies that were present in the early universe.
Patrick Kelly, the study's senior author and an assistant professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Minnesota, says that the JWST is the only telescope that can capture this tiny and distant galaxy within its reach. Professor Kelly adds that they are able to look into the path that traces back to the Big Bang and that they have never been able to examine galaxies from the early universe so deeply before.
The volume of the galaxy is roughly equivalent to one millionth of the Milky Way. However, it can be seen that the galaxy still has the same star formation quantity each year.
Space reports that, with the small size of these galaxies despite their brightness, it aligns with the famous hierarchical galaxy formation model. This model hypothesizes that the smaller ones formed earlier before they merged and became bigger galaxies, such as the Milky Way.
SciTechDaily notes that the researchers were able to spot and look into this puny galaxy due to what is known as gravitational lensing, wherein mass bends and magnifies light. Because of a galaxy cluster lens, the tiny galaxy seemed 20 times brighter compared to how it would look if its light were not magnified by the cluster.
Then, the researchers also utilized spectroscopy to know the distance of the galaxy, on top of some of its chemical and physical characteristics. Looking further into galaxies from the early universe can help scientists shed light on the mystery of the reionization of the universe.
Galaxies that existed when the cosmos was still an infant is starkly different from what can be observed in the universe today. Hayley Williams, the study's first author and a Ph.D. student from the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, says that such a discovery can help them know more about the characteristics of such early galaxies, their differences from close ones, and how they formed.
James Webb Space Telescope
According to SciTechDaily, the JWST is capable of gathering light that is 10 times what the Hubble Space Telescope can collect. In its infrared spectrum, the JWST is more sensitive at longer and redder wavelengths. Because of this, scientists can access a fresh data window.
Williams says that James Webb has the great capacity to look far into the cosmos, which is one exciting thing about the study. The scientists got to see things that other telescopes are incapable of capturing.
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