Astronomers have been waiting for years for the data from the space telescope, but they only got it a few weeks ago. The result has been a race back in time, as new discoveries find objects that formed close to the Big bang that produced our Universe. A search last week turned up a universe that was 400 million years old. A new analysis shows that the universe was only 233 million years old.
The work that led to the discovery was intended to answer a more general question: How many galaxies should we see at different times in the future?
The early Universe was opaque to light at any wavelength that carries more energy than is needed to ionize hydrogen. The red shift caused by 13 billion years of an expanding Universe has shifted the cutoff point of the UV portion of the spectrum into the IR portion. We have to look for objects that aren't visible at the shorter wavelength of the light, but are visible at the lower wavelength.
The stronger the red shift, the more distant the object is. The closer the object is to the big bang, the quicker it will happen.
AdvertisementIt's possible to tell us something about the properties of the galaxies. Identifying a large collection of early galaxies can help us determine how quickly they formed and identify any changes in the dynamics of the universe at a specific time. The luminosity function is the change in the frequencies of visible objects over time. The early galaxies have to be imaged from space because they are absorbed by the atmosphere. One of the goals of the telescope was to see things.
The new work looked at the function of the galaxies that formed after the Bigbang. In generating a catalog of early galaxies, the researchers spot what appears to be the oldest one.
Two data sources were used to reconstruct the appearance of the galaxies. The other was produced by analyzing work done with a ground-based telescope and a space telescope, both of which imaged older galaxies that produced the light that is now reaching Earth. Data sets analyzed in the paper we reported on and an area imaged in the first public photo release were part of the other data. The researchers searched for the same thing: objects that were present in the longer wavelength but not in the shorter one.
The team was able to identify 55 distant galaxies, 44 of which had never been seen before. The two ancient galaxies that were identified last week are included in the 29 that came from the data. The numbers are not very precise at higher redshifts where they are based on just one or two galaxies. The trend shows a gradual decline in visible objects out to a few hundred million years after the Bigbang.
AdvertisementThere is data for a galaxy that is at an extremely large redshift. It is less than 250 million years after the big bang. The distance is based on the fact that the first wavelength filter in which the object appears shows it to be very dim. The light cutoff generated by hydrogen is close to the edge of the filter.
It looks like it has the same amount of Suns in the form of stars as the distant galaxies. It is thought that star formation could have started as early as 120 million years after the Big bang.
The researchers are pretty confident that this new galaxy is a real finding, as they are currently unable to find any plausible explanation for it. Adding a second confirmation of the earlier discoveries greatly increases our confidence. The new telescope is delivering on its promise in terms of early galaxies.
The big question is what will show up when it's pointed at areas of high lensing, which could allow us to see structures in the early universe. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556
There is arXiv. The abstract is about the arXiv
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