The treasure trove of data being collected by the James Webb Space Telescope has led to the discovery of record-breaking galaxies by the dozen. Some of them are older than 200 million years after the Bigbang.
Prior to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most distant known galaxy was called GN-z11 and it was about 400 million years after the Bigbang. The shift shows how much light has been stretched as the universe expands. The farther back in time we see a galaxy, the higher the red shift is.
The detection of galaxies at redshift 13 is thought to be 300 million years after the Big bang. There is a new wave of scientific results that is smashing past the previous record. If true, we are able to see the galaxies as they were 200 million years ago.
The James Webb Space Telescope has its first photos in the gallery.
At this point, none of these values are confirmed. Analyzing the light from an object into a spectrum is what scientists call a spectrum. Later, that analysis will be available. It seems that the JWST is able to detect galaxies from this long- lost era.
Different methods have been used to detect the galaxies. A group of Astronomers led by HaojingYan of the University of Missouri-Columbia were able to detect 88 candidate galaxies beyond a redshift of 11, including a few at a redshift of 20. It would be the most distant ever detected if validation were to happen. The universe is 35 billion light-years away from us.
Two other papers report finding high-redshift galaxies in patches of the sky where the JWST took deep exposures. The images are part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science survey, which consists of 10 different patches of sky. The space telescope's Mid-Infrared instrument is studying four of the patches.
A team led by a PhD student from the University of Edinburgh has found a candidate galaxy that is just 250 million years old. The redshift records were set by the Hubble Space Telescope and the team found five other galaxies with a redshift greater than 12.
A team led by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin discovered a galaxy with a redshift of 14 and named it "Maisie's" after him. The Hubble Space Telescope may have seen this galaxy, but it wasn't noticed at the time. If a closer look at the data shows the galaxy, then it must have been spotted by the Hubble Telescope.
The debate as to what ionized the hydrogen gas in the universe brought an end to the so-called Cosmic Dark Ages, as all the distant galaxy candidates show evidence for strong UV light emission. Astronomers have suggested causes from the first stars to the first black holes.
Donnan's team calculated thegalaxy ultraviolet luminosity function between redshifts of 8 and 15. The function is an average of the amount of light in the sky. The more hot young stars are forming in a galaxy, the more ultraviolet light it emits. Donnan's team concluded that there is more than enough ultraviolet radiation being produced by the stars in these early galaxies.
There are a lot of high-redshift galaxies being found. Modern galaxies can hold hundreds of billions of stars, but these are only 1000 or so light-years across. The babies in the universe are thought to be as young as 20 million years old.
Some of the first galaxies in the universe could be at redshift 25 or beyond. The new detections represent generations of galaxies that followed closely after.
The abundance of high-redshift galaxies that it is finding so early in its mission suggests that they were plentiful in the early days of the universe. The rate of star formation might decline gradually the farther back in time we look, which is contrary to some expectations.
According to Finkelstein's team, the universe was already aglow with galaxies less than 300 million years after the Bigbang.
The next questions are how far back in time JWST can see the first galaxies, and if it will be enough to find them. Such a discovery would require a lot of luck, since it would rely on lucky lensing to bring the primordial galaxies into view.
The Donnan and Finkelstein papers can be found here.
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