SPACE — The early galaxy AzTECC71 is so far away that it often disappears from telescope observations. A new study conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST finally found the answer.
This image of galaxies from the early universe is nothing that could be called dazzling. He is a very opaque, dust-covered inhabitant of the cosmos, whose name is just a series of numbers and letters. It is even at a distance so far from Earth that it escapes the attention of various telescopes.
Galaxy AzTECC71 as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image: J. McKinney/M. Franco/C. Casey/University of Texas at Austin
The image was taken by the state-of-the-art James Webb Space Telescope. To his surprise, he saw AzTECC71 as it appeared 900 million years after the Big Bang. That’s when the universe produced its first stars, thousands of years before our solar system was born.
From James Webb’s eye, AzTECC71 appears as a very distant, hazy speck of light, in contrast to many of the other stunning images of galaxies and galaxy clusters in his repertoire. However, even that point still holds important lessons about the early universe.
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“The fact that something even this extreme is barely visible in our newest telescope’s most sensitive imaging is very exciting to me,” said study author Jed McKinney of the University of Texas at Austin. This team’s research has been published in the October 2023 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
“This could potentially tell us there is a large population of galaxies hiding from us.”
Scientists say AzTECC71 shows the early universe was much dustier than previously thought. This will provide more clues about how the universe has evolved since the Big Bang occurred about 13.8 billion years ago.
AzTECC71 was first seen as an incomprehensible blob of light by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. Later it was also seen by the ALMA radio telescope in Chile. However, it appears to disappear in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
“This thing is an absolute monster,” McKinney said. Even though it looks like a small blob, it actually forms hundreds of new stars every year.
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As part of an international effort to map the universe’s earliest structure, McKinney and his colleagues looked for such galaxies in data collected by JWST. The observatory’s powerful infrared eye is able to peer into the dust-thick clouds that were common in the early universe.
Before JWST became operational, these galaxies were almost impossible to find. Light from newborn stars, deep within dust-covered galaxies, is absorbed at optical wavelengths by the dust itself. It is then re-emitted at a fainter and longer wavelength that only JWST can capture.
2023-12-11 05:48:00
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