NASA Discovers 2 Farthest Galaxies from Earth

KOMPAS.com – Galaxies are part of the universe consisting of hundreds of trillions of stars and space fog.

There are many galaxies in the universe. The distance between galaxies is very far and is usually calculated in units of billions or millions of light.

Also read: What does the new galaxy JWST-ER1 discovered by the James Webb Telescope look like?

Not long ago, two new galaxies were discovered through NASA’s James Webb telescope. These two galaxies are listed as the most distant galaxies.

It’s a long distance

Quoted from Space.com, Tuesday (14/11/2023), these two galaxies are referred to as UNCOVER-z13 and UNCOVER-z12. “z” is the symbol for the red shift that occurs in the galaxy.

Redshift is the effect of the light of a distant galaxy so that the light appears to shift towards a larger spectrum or becomes red when viewed from Earth.

The red shift that occurred on UNCOVER-z12 was 12.393. Meanwhile, UNCOVER-z13 has a redshift of 13,079. This value makes the UNCOVER-z13 galaxy the second most distant galaxy ever discovered.

Store past universe information

Reporting from ScienceDailyMonday (13/11/2023), the appearance of these two galaxies is quite unique because they look like a bean and a hairy ball.

The light from this galaxy takes a very long time to reach Earth, so these two galaxies are said to be able to store information about the universe in the past.

“Little is known about the early universe, and the only way to study that time is to test existing theories about early galaxy formation and growth is through (observations of) these very distant galaxies,” said Bingjie Wang, a researcher in this research.

Also read: What does the new galaxy discovered by Spanish astronomers look like?

Wang himself is a member of the JWST UNCOVER (James Webb Space Telescope, Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization) team.

Meanwhile, another member of JWST UNCOVER, Joel Leja, also explained how this galaxy stores information from the past.

“The light from these galaxies is ancient, about 3 times older than Earth,” said Leja, who is also an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, United States.

“Like a lighthouse, its light penetrates the very thin hydrogen gas when the early universe was formed. Through its light, we can begin to understand the exotic physics that governed galaxies when the universe was formed,” he continued.

The process of discovering UNCOVER-z13 and UNCOVER-z12

These two galaxies were among approximately 60,000 light sources in the Pandora Cluster in one of JWST’s images captured in 2022 during JWST’s first year of operation.

In the following months, the UNCOVER team selected 700 candidates from 60,000 light sources for in-depth observation. 8 of these light sources were said to have the potential to become galaxies which were later discovered.

Then, JWST records the spectra of 8 candidate light sources as a typical fingerprint which represents the detailed number of sources at each wavelength for each source.

Then, a giant magnifying lens was used to look at these 8 candidates in depth. As a result, these 2 ancient galaxies were discovered.

Also read: How Long Does It Take to Travel from Earth to the Nearest Galaxy?

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