James Webb, revolutionary observations in the study led by Italy on two galaxies at the origin of the Cosmos
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The telescope James Webb was able to detect the light coming from two galaxies – among the very first in the early universe – between 350 and 450 million years ago after the Big Bang.
These are the results of the analysis of observations of the very distant galaxy cluster Abell 2744 and of two regions of the sky adjacent to it, carried out by the powerful space telescope between 28 and 29 June as part of the project Glass-Jwst Early Release Science Program.
“This work highlights the ability of this telescope to select sources in the epoch of the so-called ‘cosmic dawn’. No less important is the fact of having found, among others, two brilliant sources in a relatively small area,” he says Marcus CastellanoINAF researcher in Rome and first author of the article describing the search for these two very distant galaxies, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“Based on our predictions, we thought we would have to probe a much larger volume of space to find such galaxies. Instead, the results seem to indicate that the number of bright galaxies is much greater than expected, perhaps due to a greater efficiency of star formation”.
Result of the collaboration of NASA with ESA (the European Space Agency) and the CSA (the Canadian Space Agency), the James Webb Space Telescope it is the largest, most complex and most expensive – around ten billion dollars – ever built by man. It took off on Christmas Day 2021 from Europe’s Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocket.
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“These observations are revolutionary: a new chapter of astronomy has opened – he comments Paula Santini, INAF researcher in Rome and co-author of the article -. Already after the very first days from the start of the data collection, Webb showed that he was able to reveal astrophysical sources in still unexplored epochs”.
Unlike previously used tools – from Hubble Space Telescope to the largest observatories available on land – James Webb has one infrared sensitivity and resolution that allow you to search for such distant objects.
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“We are exploring an era a few hundred years after the Big Bang that was partly unknown and partly barely explored, with many uncertainties bordering on the possibilities of previous telescopes,” recalls Castellano.
How is when did the first galaxies form? and the very first generation of stars – the so-called population III – is one of big unanswered questions of astrophysics.
“These galaxies are very different from the Milky Way or other large galaxies that we see around us today,” explains Tommaso Treu, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and principal investigator of the Glass-Jwst project. “The question was, when you see the redder, older stars with Webb, do you see that the galaxy is actually much larger than it looked from ultraviolet observations?”
The new observations by James Webb seem to indicate that galaxies in the early universe were much brighteralbeit more compact than expected.
If true, it could make it easier for the mighty telescope to find even more of these early galaxies in its galaxy. upcoming deep sky observations.
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