March 28, 2024

Scientists Have Spotted the Farthest Galaxy Ever – It May Be Home to the Oldest Stars in the Universe

HD1, object in red, appears at the center of a zoom-in image. At initially, the researchers presumed HD1 was a standard starburst galaxy, a galaxy that is developing stars at a high rate. After calculating how numerous stars HD1 was producing, they obtained “an extraordinary rate– HD1 would be forming more than 100 stars every single year. “If we assume the stars produced in HD1 are these initially, or Population III, stars, then its residential or commercial properties could be discussed more quickly. Population III stars are capable of producing more UV light than regular stars, which might clarify the severe ultraviolet luminosity of HD1.”

The team proposes 2 concepts: HD1 might be forming stars at an impressive rate and is perhaps even house to Population III stars, deep spaces really first stars– which, up until now, have never ever been observed. Additionally, HD1 might contain a supermassive great void about 100 million times the mass of our Sun.
” Answering questions about the nature of a source so far away can be difficult,” says Fabio Pacucci, lead author of the MNRAS research study, co-author in the discovery paper on ApJ, and an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics. “Its like guessing the nationality of a ship from the flag it flies, while being far ashore, with the vessel in the middle of a gale and thick fog.
One can perhaps see some colors and shapes of the flag, however not in their whole. Its ultimately a long game of analysis and exemption of implausible circumstances.
HD1 is extremely bright in ultraviolet light. To explain this, “some energetic processes are taking place there or, even better, did take place some billions of years ago,” Pacucci says.
Initially, the scientists assumed HD1 was a basic starburst galaxy, a galaxy that is developing stars at a high rate. However after calculating how lots of stars HD1 was producing, they acquired “an incredible rate– HD1 would be forming more than 100 stars every single year. This is at least 10 times greater than what we expect for these galaxies.”
Thats when the group began presuming that HD1 might not be forming typical, everyday stars.
” The very first population of stars that formed in the universe were more massive, more luminescent and hotter than contemporary stars,” Pacucci says. “If we assume the stars produced in HD1 are these initially, or Population III, stars, then its residential or commercial properties might be described more easily. In fact, Population III stars can producing more UV light than regular stars, which might clarify the severe ultraviolet luminosity of HD1.”
A supermassive great void, nevertheless, could likewise explain the extreme luminosity of HD1. As it gobbles down enormous amounts of gas, high energy photons might be given off by the region around the black hole.
If thats the case, it would be without a doubt the earliest supermassive great void known to humankind, observed much more detailed in time to the Big Bang compared to the existing record-holder.
Timeline shows the earliest galaxy candidates and the history of deep space. Credit: Harikane et al., NASA, EST and P. Oesch/Yale
” HD1 would represent a huge child in the hospital room of the early universe,” states Avi Loeb an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics and co-author on the MNRAS research study. “It breaks the greatest quasar redshift on record by nearly a factor of 2, an exceptional accomplishment.”
HD1 was found after more than 1,200 hours of observing time with the Subaru Telescope, VISTA Telescope, UK Infrared Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope.
” It was really tough work to discover HD1 out of more than 700,000 items,” says Yuichi Harikane, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo who found the galaxy. “HD1s red color matched the anticipated characteristics of a galaxy 13.5 billion light-years away surprisingly well, offering me a bit of goosebumps when I found it.”
The team then conducted follow-up observations utilizing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to verify the distance, which is 100 million light years even more than GN-z11, the present record-holder for the outermost galaxy.
Utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope, the research team will quickly as soon as again observe HD1 to validate its distance from Earth. If existing calculations show appropriate, HD1 will be the most far-off– and oldest– galaxy ever recorded.
The same observations will enable the team to dig much deeper into HD1s identity and verify if one of their theories is right.
” Forming a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, a great void in HD1 should have outgrown a massive seed at an unmatched rate,” Loeb says. “Once again, nature appears to be more imaginative than we are.”
References:
” A Search for H-Dropout Lyman Break Galaxies at z ~ 12-16″ by Yuichi Harikane, Akio K. Inoue, Ken Mawatari, Takuya Hashimoto, Satoshi Yamanaka, Yoshinobu Fudamoto, Hiroshi Matsuo, Yoichi Tamura, Pratika Dayal, L. Y. Aaron Yung, Anne Hutter, Fabio Pacucci, Yuma Sugahara and Anton M. Koekemoer, 7 April 2022, The Astrophysical Journal.DOI: arXiv:2112.09141.
” Are the Newly-Discovered z ∼ 13 Drop-out Sources Starburst Galaxies or Quasars?” by Fabio Pacucci, Pratika Dayal, Yuichi Harikane, Akio K. Inoue and Abraham Loeb, 7 April 2022,. DOI: arXiv:2201.00823.
Harvard & & Smithsonian
. The Center for Astrophysics

HD1, object in red, appears at the center of a zoom-in image. Credit: Harikane et al
. Shining just ~ 300 million years after the Big Bang, it might be home to the oldest stars in the universe, or a supermassive great void.
A worldwide team of astronomers, including scientists at the Center for Astrophysics|Harvard & & Smithsonian, has actually found the most remote astronomical things ever: a galaxy.
Called HD1, the galaxy candidate is some 13.5 billion light-years away and is explained today (April 7, 2022) in The Astrophysical Journal. In an accompanying paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, scientists have begun to speculate exactly what the galaxy is.