The James Webb Space Telescope observes the early universe, seeing galaxies such as our Milky Way

new photos of[{” attribute=””>NASA’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), led by UT Austin professor, Steven Finkelstein.

The team identified another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, also from about 11 billion years ago, which makes two barred galaxies existing farther back in time than any previously discovered.

In an article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they highlight these two galaxies and show examples of four other barred galaxies from more than 8 billion years ago.

“For this study, we are looking at a new regime where no one had used this kind of data or done this kind of quantitative analysis before,” said Yuchen “Kay” Guo, a graduate student who led the analysis, “so everything is new. It’s like going into a forest that nobody has ever gone into.”

Bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions, boosting star formation.

“Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies,” Jogee said. “Just like we need to bring raw material from the harbor to inland factories that make new products, a bar powerfully transports gas into the central region where the gas is rapidly converted into new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy.”

Bars also help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way.

This simulation shows how star rods form (left) and rod-driven gas flows (right). Starbars play an important role in galactic evolution by funneling gas to the central regions of the galaxy, where it is rapidly converted into new stars, 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy. The bars also indirectly help in the formation of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies by directing the gaseous part of the way. Credit: Françoise Combes, Paris Observatory

The discovery of the rods during these early eras has shaken the scenarios of galactic evolution in many ways.

“This early detection of the rods means that models of galactic evolution now have a new path through the rods to accelerate the production of new stars in the early epochs,” Jogee said.

And the existence of these first bars challenges theoretical models because they have to correct galactic physics to predict the correct abundance of bars. The team will test different models in their next works.

A montage of JWST images shows six examples of barred galaxies, two of which represent the longest recovery times quantified and characterized to date. Labels in the upper left corner of each issue show each galaxy’s retrograde time, ranging from 8.4 to 11 billion years ago (Gyr), when the universe was only 40% to 20% of its size. 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 offers greater light-gathering capabilities, allowing it to see further and in higher resolution. Second, it can see better through the dust because it observes at longer infrared wavelengths than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Graduates Eden Wise and Zilei Chen played key roles in the research, visually reviewing hundreds of galaxies looking for what appeared to have bars, which helped narrow the list down to a few dozen so other researchers could analyze it with calculations more in-depth. . Approaching.

Reference: “First look az > 1 bars in near-infrared rest of frame with JWST early CEERS images” by Yuchen Guo, Sharda Joji, Stephen L Finkelstein, Zili Chen, Aiden Weiss, Michaela P Bagley, William 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 Gardens-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 Constantine, Darren Croton, Kelsey Davis, Alexander Dela Vega, Avishai Dekel, Maximilian Franco, Jonathan P. Gardner, Ben W. Holwerda, Taylor A. Hutchison, Viraj Pandya,[ PubMed ]10. Pablo G. Perez-Gonzalez, Swara Ravindranath, Caitlin Rose, Jonathan R. Trump, Weichen Wang Oil, 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 relied on resources from the Texas Center for Advanced Computing, including the Frontera, the most powerful supercomputer at an American university.