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The James Webb Space Telescope looks into the early universe and sees galaxies like our Milky Way

This simulation shows how star rods form (left) and the inflows of gas pushed by the rods (right). Starbars play an important role in galactic evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of the galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into new stars, 10 to 100 times faster than the rate in the rest of the galaxy. The bars also indirectly contribute to the growth of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies by channeling some of the gas. Credit: Françoise Combes, Paris Observatory

New photos of[{”attribute=””>NASA[{”attribute=””>NASA’s[{”attribute=””>NASA[{”attribute=””>NASA’sJames Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers longer wavelengths of light, with greatly improved sensitivity, allowing it to see inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today, as well as look further back in time to observe the first galaxies that they were formed in the early universe.

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute=””>TelescopiospazialeJamesWebb[{“attribute=””>JamesWebbSpaceTelescope[{“attribute=””>TelescopiospazialeJamesWebb[{“attribute=””>JamesWebbSpaceTelescope (JWST) reveal galaxies with starbars — elongated features of stars that extend from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks — for the first time at a time when the universe was only 25% of its current age. The discovery of the so-called barred galaxies, similar to ours

Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System and takes its name from its appearance from Earth. It is a barred spiral galaxy that contains about 100-400 billion stars and is between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years in diameter.

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute=””>MilkyWay[{“attribute=””>MilkyWay[{“attribute=””>ViaLattea[{“attribute=””>MilkyWayso early in the universe will require astrophysicists to refine their theories of the evolution of galaxies.

Before JWST, images from

Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as the Hubble or HST) is one of NASA’s large observatories and was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990. It is one of the largest and most versatile space telescopes in use and has a mirror size of 2.4 meters and four main instruments observing in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute=””>HubbleSpaceTelescope[{“attribute=””>HubbleSpaceTelescope[{“attribute=””>TelescopiospazialeHubble[{“attribute=””>HubbleSpaceTelescope he had never detected bars in such a young era. In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little more than a disc-shaped blob, but in the corresponding JWST image taken last summer, it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear starbar.

“I looked at this data and said, ‘We’re dropping everything else!'” said Shardha Jogee, an astronomy professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “The barely visible bars in the Hubble data just popped out in the JWST image, showing the tremendous power of JWST to see the underlying structure in galaxies,” she said, describing the data from the Early Release Cosmic Evolution Science Survey (CEERS), led by UT Austin professor Steven Finkelstein.

JWST’s power to map galaxies at higher resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it to look through the dust and reveal the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. You can see it in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205, as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped patch obscured by dust and affected by the glow of young stars, but in the corresponding mid-infrared JWST image (taken in the last summer), is a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear star bar. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin

The team identified another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, also from about 11 billion years ago, making two barred galaxies exist further back in time than any previously discovered.

In an article accepted for publication in The letters from the astrophysicist diaryhighlight these two galaxies and show examples of four other barred galaxies more than 8 billion years old.

“For this study, we’re looking at a new regimen where nobody had used this kind of data or done this kind of quantitative analysis before,” said Yuchen “Kay” Guo, a graduate student who conducted the analysis, “so all it’s new. It’s like entering a forest that no one has ever entered.”

The bars play an important role in the evolution of galaxies by channeling gas into the central regions, promoting star formation.

“Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies,” Jogee said. “Just as we need to get raw material from the port to inland factories making new products, a rod powerfully carries the gas to the core region where the gas is rapidly converted into new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster faster than in the rest of the galaxy.

The bars also help grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by funneling gas along the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch؟v=iBhsUQL1YPE
This simulation shows how star rods form (left) and the inflows of gas pushed by the rods (right). Starbars play an important role in galactic evolution by funneling gas into the central regions of the galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into new stars, 10 to 100 times faster than the rate in the rest of the galaxy. The bars also indirectly contribute to the growth of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies by channeling some of the gas. Credit: Françoise Combes, Paris Observatory

The discovery of the bars during these early epochs upsets the evolutionary scenarios of galaxies in several ways.

“This discovery of the first pillars means that models of galaxy evolution now have a new path through the bars to accelerate the production of new stars in the early eras,” said Joji.

And the existence of these early plumes challenges theoretical models because they need to properly adjust the physics of galaxies to predict the correct abundance of the bars. The team will test different models in the next articles.

The first of Webb's six galaxies

A montage of JWST images shows six examples of barred galaxies, two of which represent the highest retrospective times identified and quantified to date. The labels in the upper left of each figure show each galaxy’s retrograde time, ranging from 8.4 to 11 billion years (cog), when the universe was only 40% to 20% of its current age. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin

JWST can detect structures in distant galaxies better than Hubble for two reasons: First, its larger mirror gives it greater light-gathering ability, allowing it to see farther and in higher resolution. Second, it can see better through the dust because it observes at longer infrared wavelengths than the Hubble Space Telescope.

College students Eden Wise and Zilei Chen played a major role in the research by visually examining hundreds of galaxies, looking for those that appeared to have bars, and narrowing the list down to a few dozen for others. Researchers can analyze it more carefully. mathematical approach. Approaching.

Reference: “First Look at z > 1 Bars in Near Infrared Rest of Frame with JWST Early CEERS Imagery” by Yuchen Guo, Sharda Joji, Stephen L Finkelstein, Zili Chen, Aiden Weiss, Michaela P Bagley, Guillermo Barrow, Stegen & Witts, Dale D. Kosevski, Jehan S. Kartaltepe, Elizabeth J. McGrath, Henry C. Ferguson, Bahram Mobacher, Mauro Giavalescu, Ray A. Lucas, George A. Zavala, Jennifer M. Lutz, Norman A. Grojean, Mark Huertas-Company , Jesus Vega-Ferrero, Nimish P. Hathi, Pablo Arrabal Haro, Mark Dickinson, Anton M. Koekemoer, Casey Papovich, Nor Pirzkal, LY Aaron Yung, Bren E. Backhaus, Eric F. Bell, Antonello Calabrò, Nikko G. Cleary , Rosemary T. Cogan, MC Cooper, Luca Constantin, Darren Croton, Kelsey Davis Alexandre de la Vega, Avishai Dekel, Maximilian Franco, Jonathan P. Gardner, Ben W. Holwerda, Taylor A. Hutchison, Viraj Pandya, by Pablo J. Perez-Gonzalez, Swara Ravindranath, Caitlin Rose, Jonathan R. Trump, Weinchen Wang, Letters from the Astrophysical Journal.
arXiv: 2210.08658

Other co-authors from the University of Austin are Stephen Finkelstein, Michaela Bagley and Maximilian Franco. Dozens of co-authors from other institutions come from the US, UK, Japan, Spain, France, Italy, Australia and Israel.

Funding for this research was provided in part by the Roland K. Blumberg Endowment in Astronomy, the Heising-Simons Foundation and NASA. This work drew on the resources of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, including the Frontera, the most powerful supercomputer at an American university.

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