NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Captures ‘Ghost Galaxy’ AzTECC71: What It Reveals About the Early Universe

CNN Indonesia

Friday, 08 Dec 2023 18:01 IWST

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) managed to capture a “ghost galaxy” object. (Photo: J. McKinney/M. Franco/C. Casey/The University of Texas at Austin.)

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) courtesy NASA successfully captured the object”ghost galaxy” which is very opaque and covered in dust called AzTECC71.

The object is at a very far distance from Earth. However, surprisingly, here we see AzTECC71 as it did 900 million years after the Big Bang. When the Big Bang occurred, the universe produced its first stars, thousands of years before our solar system was born.

James Webb’s telescope images of this galaxy as a hazy speck of light are in stark contrast to many of the stunning images of galaxies and galaxy clusters in his repertoire. However, these ‘stains’ hold important lessons for understanding the beginning of the universe.

“The fact that something even this extreme is barely visible in the most sensitive imaging of our newest telescopes is very exciting to me,” study author Jed McKinney of the University of Texas at Austin said in a statement, citing Live Science.

“This could potentially tell us that there is a large population of galaxies hiding from us.” he added.

Scientists think this means that the early universe was much dustier than expected. This provides 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. But later, it appeared 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.

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.

Before JWST, these galaxies were almost impossible to find. Light from newborn stars, deep within dust-shrouded galaxies, is absorbed at optical wavelengths by the dust itself and re-emitted at fainter and longer wavelengths that can be captured by JWST.

One of the five galaxies remains invisible to Hubble, forming a group that astronomers call Hubble dark galaxies.

“That means our understanding of the evolutionary history of galaxies is biased because we only see uncovered and less dusty galaxies,” McKinney said.

In the near future, McKinney and his team will soon reveal more faint and hidden galaxies using JWST data. Where by using JWST you can not only gaze into the farthest reaches of the universe but can also penetrate the thickest veil of dust.

(rfi/dmi)

Watch the Video Below:

2023-12-08 11:01:16
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