May 8, 2024

Never-Before-Seen Details of Early Universe from Webb Space Telescope

The massive gravity of galaxy cluster MACS0647 functions as a cosmic lens to magnify and bend light from the more distant MACS0647-JD system. It also triply lensed the JD system, triggering its image to appear in three separate areas. These images, which are highlighted with white boxes, are significant JD1, JD2, and JD3; zoomed-in views are revealed in the panels at. In this image from Webbs Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, blue was appointed to wavelengths of 1.15 and 1.5 microns (F115W, F150W), green to wavelengths of 2.0 and 2.77 microns (F200W, F277W) and red to wavelengths of 3.65 and 4.44 microns (F365W, F444W). Download the full-resolution variation from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Tiger Hsiao (Johns Hopkins University) Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
NASAs James Webb Space Telescope was specifically designed to detect the faint infrared light from very far-off galaxies and offer astronomers a glance at the early universe. The nature of galaxies throughout this early period of our universe is not well known nor understood. With the assistance of gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies in the foreground, faint background galaxies can be magnified and also appear several times in various parts of an image.
Today, we take a seat with three astronomers dealing with Webb to talk about their latest findings. The group members are Dan Coe of Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)/ Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) for the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Johns Hopkins University; Tiger Hsiao of the Johns Hopkins University; and Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin. These researchers have been observing the far-off galaxy MACS0647-JD with Webb, and theyve found something interesting.
Dan Coe: I found this galaxy MACS0647-JD 10 years ago with the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, I d never ever worked on high redshift galaxies, and then I found this one that was potentially the most far-off at redshift 11, about 97 percent of the method back to the big bang. Were actively talking about whether these are two galaxies or 2 clumps of stars within a galaxy.

Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao: You can likewise see that the colors in between the two objects are so different. The blue one actually has very young star formation and almost no dust, but the little, red object has more dust within, and is older.
Its truly fascinating that we see two structures in such a little system. We might be witnessing a galaxy merger in the extremely early universe. If this is the most distant merger, I will be really thrilled!
Dan Coe: Due to the gravitational lensing of the massive galaxy cluster MACS0647, its lensed into 3 images: JD3, jd1, and jd2. Theyre magnified by aspects of 8, 5, and 2, respectively.
Rebecca Larson: Up to this point, we havent actually been able to study galaxies in the early universe in terrific information. Studying them can assist us understand how they progressed into the ones like the galaxy we live in today.
I believe my preferred part is, for so lots of brand-new Webb image we get, if you look in the background, there are all these little dots– and those are all galaxies! Every single one of them. We have not even actually tried to utilize this telescope to look at one area for a long time.
This is a contrast between the Hubble Space Telescope images of MACS0647-JD from 2012 (filter info on Hubblesite.org) and the 2022 images from the James Webb Space Telescope (using the very same color tasks as the image above). Note that MACS0647-JD appears as a faint, red dot in the Hubble image, however Webb reveals much more detail.
About the authors:.
Dan Coe is an astronomer of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency and the Johns Hopkins University. Tiger Hsiao is a Ph.D. college student at the Johns Hopkins University. Rebecca Larson is a National Science Foundation fellow and Ph.D. college student at the University of Texas at Austin. These NIRCam observations of MAC0647-JD are part of the teams Cycle 1 program GO 1433 (PI Coe). The team is planning more a comprehensive study of the physical residential or commercial properties of MACS0647-JD with Webb spectroscopy in January 2023.
Reference: “JWST reveals a possible z ∼ 11 galaxy merger in triply-lensed MACS0647 − JD” by Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao, Dan Coe, Abdurrouf, Lily Whitler, Intae Jung, Gourav Khullar, Ashish Kumar Meena, Pratika Dayal, Kirk S. S. Barrow, Lillian Santos-Olmsted, Adam Casselman, Eros Vanzella, Mario Nonino, Yolanda Jimenez-Teja, Masamune Oguri, Daniel P. Stark, Lukas J. Furtak, Adi Zitrin, Angela Adamo, Gabriel Brammer, Larry Bradley, Jose M. Diego, Erik Zackrisson, Steven L. Finkelstein, Rogier A. Windhorst, Rachana Bhatawdekar, Taylor A. Hutchison, Tom Broadhurst, Paola Dimauro, Felipe Andrade-Santos, Jan J. Eldridge, Ana Acebron, Roberto J. Avila, Matthew B. Bayliss, Alex Benitez, Christian Binggeli, Patricia Bolan, Marusa Bradac, Adam C. Carnall, Christopher J. Conselice, Megan Donahue, Brenda Frye, Seiji Fujimoto, Alaina Henry, Bethan L. James, Susan Kassin, Lisa Kewley, Rebecca L. Larson, Tod Lauer, David Law, Guillaume Mahler, Ramesh Mainali, Stephan McCandliss, David Nicholls, Norbert Pirzkal, Marc Postman, Jane R. Rigby, Russell Ryan, Peter Senchyna, Keren Sharon, Ikko Shimizu, Victoria Strait, Mengtao Tang, Michele Trenti, Anton Vikaeus and Brian Welch, 25 October 2022, Astrophysics > > Astrophysics of Galaxies.arXiv:2210.14123.

In this image from Webbs Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, blue was designated to wavelengths of 1.15 and 1.5 microns (F115W, F150W), green to wavelengths of 2.0 and 2.77 microns (F200W, F277W) and red to wavelengths of 3.65 and 4.44 microns (F365W, F444W). With the assistance of gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies in the foreground, faint background galaxies can be magnified and also appear numerous times in various parts of an image.
I believe my preferred part is, for so numerous brand-new Webb image we get, if you look in the background, there are all these little dots– and those are all galaxies! This is a contrast in between the Hubble Space Telescope images of MACS0647-JD from 2012 (filter details on Hubblesite.org) and the 2022 images from the James Webb Space Telescope (utilizing the very same color assignments as the image above). Keep in mind that MACS0647-JD appears as a faint, red dot in the Hubble image, but Webb exposes much more information.