April 29, 2024

James Webb Space Telescope Looks Back Into the Early Universe, Sees Galaxies Like Our Milky Way

Excellent bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of a galaxy, where it is rapidly transformed into new stars, at a rate usually 10 to 100 times as quick as the rate in the rest of the galaxy. Bars also indirectly help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way. The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it look through dust and reveal the hidden structure and mass of remote galaxies. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little bit more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and affected by the glare of young stars, however in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this previous summer season), its a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear outstanding bar. Excellent bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of a galaxy, where it is quickly converted into new stars, at a rate typically 10 to 100 times as quick as the rate in the rest of the galaxy.

The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble enables it check out dust and reveal the hidden structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these 2 pictures of the galaxy EGS23205, viewed as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is bit more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and impacted by the glare of young stars, however in the matching JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), its a lovely spiral galaxy with a clear outstanding bar. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin.
The team recognized another disallowed galaxy, EGS-24268, also from about 11 billion years ago, that makes two disallowed galaxies existing further back in time than any formerly discovered.
In a short article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they highlight these 2 galaxies and show examples of four other disallowed galaxies from more than 8 billion years back.
” For this study, we are taking a look at a brand-new regime where nobody had used this type of data or done this sort of quantitative analysis before,” stated Yuchen “Kay” Guo, a college student who led the analysis, “so whatever is new. Its like going into a forest that no one has ever entered into.”
Bars play a crucial function in galaxy advancement by funneling gas into the central regions, increasing star development.
” Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies,” Jogee said. “Just like we require to bring raw material from the harbor to inland factories that make brand-new items, a bar powerfully transfers gas into the central area where the gas is rapidly transformed into brand-new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy.”
Bars likewise assist to grow supermassive great voids in the centers of galaxies by carrying the gas part of the method.
This simulation shows both how excellent bars kind (left) and the bar-driven gas inflows (right). Stellar bars play an important function in galaxy development by funneling gas into the main areas of a galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into brand-new stars, at a rate typically 10 to 100 times as fast as the rate in the remainder of the galaxy. Bars also indirectly assist to grow supermassive great voids in the centers of galaxies by funneling the gas part of the way. Credit: Francoise Combes, Paris Observatory
The discovery of bars throughout such early epochs shocks galaxy evolution scenarios in numerous methods.
” This discovery of early bars suggests galaxy evolution models now have a new path by means of bars to accelerate the production of brand-new stars at early epochs,” Jogee said.
And the extremely existence of these early bars obstacles theoretical models as they need to get the galaxy physics right in order to forecast the correct abundance of bars. The team will be testing different designs in their next documents.
Montage of JWST images showing six example barred galaxies, two of which represent the highest lookback times quantitatively determined and characterized to date. The labels in the top left of each figure show the lookback time of each galaxy, ranging from 8.4 to 11 billion years earlier (Gyr), when the universe was a mere 40% to 20% of its present age. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin
JWST can unveil structures in distant galaxies much better than Hubble for 2 reasons: First, its bigger mirror provides it more light-gathering capability, permitting it to see farther and with higher resolution. Second, it can translucent dust much better as it observes at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble.
Undergraduate students Eden Wise and Zilei Chen played a key function in the research study by visually reviewing numerous galaxies, looking for those that appeared to have bars, which helped narrow the list to a few dozen for the other scientists to examine with a more extensive mathematical technique.
Recommendation: “First Look at z > > 1 Bars in the Rest-Frame Near-Infrared with JWST Early CEERS Imaging” by Yuchen Guo, Shardha Jogee, Steven L. Finkelstein, Zilei Chen, Eden Wise, Micaela B. Bagley, Guillermo Barro, Stijn Wuyts, Dale D. Kocevski, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Elizabeth J. McGrath, Henry C. Ferguson, Bahram Mobasher, Mauro Giavalisco, Ray A. Lucas, Jorge A. Zavala, Jennifer M. Lotz, Norman A. Grogin, Marc Huertas-Company, Jesús Vega-Ferrero, Nimish P. Hathi, Pablo Arrabal Haro, Mark Dickinson, Anton M. Koekemoer, Casey Papovich, Nor Pirzkal, L. Y. Aaron Yung, Bren E. Backhaus, Eric F. Bell, Antonello Calabrò, Nikko J. Cleri, Rosemary T. Coogan, M. C. Cooper, Luca Costantin, Darren Croton, Kelcey Davis, Alexander de la Vega, Avishai Dekel, Maximilien Franco, Jonathan P. Gardner, Benne W. Holwerda, Taylor A. Hutchison, Viraj Pandya, Pablo G. Pérez-González, Swara Ravindranath, Caitlin Rose, Jonathan R. Trump and Weichen Wang, Accepted, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.arXiv:2210.08658.
Other co-authors from UT Austin are Steven Finkelstein, Micaela Bagley and Maximilien Franco. Dozens of co-authors from other organizations come from the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Spain, France, Italy, Australia and Israel.
Funding for this research study was offered in part by the Roland K. Blumberg Endowment in Astronomy, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and NASA. This work depended on resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, including Frontera, the most powerful supercomputer at a U.S. university.

Stellar bars play a crucial function in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of a galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into new stars, at a rate generally 10 to 100 times as fast as the rate in the rest of the galaxy. Bars also indirectly help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way.
New images from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) expose for the very first time galaxies with outstanding bars– lengthened features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks– at a time when the universe was a mere 25% of its present age. The finding of so-called disallowed galaxies, comparable to our Milky Way, this early in deep space will need astrophysicists to fine-tune their theories of galaxy evolution.
Prior to JWST, images from the Hubble Space Telescope had never ever found bars at such young epochs. In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little bit more than a disk-shaped spot, but in the corresponding JWST image taken this past summer season, its a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear outstanding bar.
” I took one take a look at these information, and I said, We are dropping whatever else!” said Shardha Jogee, teacher of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin “The bars hardly visible in Hubble information simply popped out in the JWST image, showing the tremendous power of JWST to see the hidden structure in galaxies,” she stated, explaining information from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), led by UT Austin professor, Steven Finkelstein.