Everywhere we look, our universe is full of luminous matter.
The ‘red-dead’ galaxy NGC 1277 is located in the Perseus cluster. While the other galaxies contain a mix of red-blue stars, this galaxy has not formed any new stars in about 10 billion years. Closer objects in the foreground, such as stars, as well as more distant galaxies are present throughout this image.
Galaxies, powered by stars, exist spread across the cosmos.
The galaxies that make up Pandora’s Cluster, Abell 2744, are present within three distinct cluster components that are easily visually recognizable, while the remaining background sources are scattered throughout the Universe, including many from the first ~1 billion years of cosmic history. This field of view is now known to contain many of the earliest galaxies ever found, as well as the youngest protocluster of galaxies ever discovered to date: just 650 million years after the Big Bang.
Further away they are bluer, smaller and less developed.
There are numerous galaxies similar to today’s Milky Way, but younger galaxies similar to the Milky Way are inherently smaller, bluer, more chaotic, and generally richer in gas than the galaxies we see today. For the first galaxies, this effect goes to extremes. As far back as we have ever seen, galaxies obeyed these rules.
Even at the limits of our instruments, galaxies still abound.
This small part of the JADES survey area, taken with JWST’s NIRCam instrument, shows in detail relatively nearby galaxies, intermediate-distance galaxies that appear to be close together, and even ultra-distant galaxies that may be interacting or stars, despite their weak nature and their weak properties. red appearance. We are just beginning to explore the full richness of the cosmos with JWST.
There is no deeper insight than JADES: the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey.
This image shows the survey area of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). This region encompasses and contains the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, revealing new galaxies at record distances that Hubble could not see. The colors in JWST images are not the ‘true colors’, but are assigned based on a variety of choices. This image, released in December 2022, has since been supplemented with follow-up observations within the same region of space, requiring spectroscopic observations to determine the distance to these galaxies.
With new spectroscopic data, the cosmic distance record has fallen again.
This image shows the spectrum, or intensity as a function of wavelength, of the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 as acquired by JWST’s NIRSpec instrument. The Lyman break function tells us that the galaxy has a redshift of z=14.32, which corresponds to an age of the universe at that time of only 285 million years.
JADES-GS-z14-0 is now the most distant galaxy ever found: just 285 million years after the Big Bang.
If you plot the cosmic distance record over time, it’s clear that there have been many big jumps: in the 1960s, the late 1990s, and now again in the 1920s, in the JWST era. Although there are still uncertainties in the cosmology, this new record-breaking galaxy should appear between 270 and 305 million years after the Big Bang.
Here are the five big lessons we’ve already learned from its discovery.
Shown in the context of the JWST JADES field, galaxy JADEs-GS-z14-0 is completely unremarkable, but nevertheless has just broken the cosmic distance record again, becoming the first galaxy ever found when the universe was less than 300 million years old. years old: only 2.1% of the current age.
1.) Not all early galaxies are compact.
Of the most distant galaxies, GN-z11 and GHZ2 are among the brightest, yet they are still remarkably compact. JADES-GS-z14-1 is more typical: fainter but still very compact, while JADES-GS-z14-0 is more enigmatic: bright and vast, suggesting a physical size of ~1700 light-years at its incredible distance.
Although (second) JADES-GS-z14-1 is point-like, its more distant cousin is already 1,700 light-years across.
The galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, next to a much closer, unrelated galaxy within it that happens to be along the exact same line of sight. Its vastness is clearly visible even in this magnified NIRCam image of the two galaxies.
2.) Not all ultra-distant galaxy candidates are right.
Before JWST, about 40 candidates for ultra-distant galaxies were known, mainly from Hubble’s observations. Early JWST results revealed many more candidates for ultra-distant galaxies, but now a whopping 717 of them have been found in JADES’s field of view 125 square arcminutes. The entire night sky is more than 1 million times larger, indicating that there are at least hundreds of millions of these ultra-distant galaxies to be found. Some will survive spectroscopic follow-up, others will not. There is still a lot of science to be done.
Some possible ultra-distant galaxies are simply dusty and intrinsically red, spectroscopy shows.
Although JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1 (in red) have proven to be real, ultra-distant galaxies, many of the candidate galaxies (in blue) will prove to be impostors at closer distances. from us: just intrinsically red and/or dusty. The blue dot with a black circle around it was also examined by NIRSpec, which showed that it was not an ultra-distant galaxy at all.
3.) Some galaxies are ‘hidden’ by closer invaders.
JADES-GS-z14-0, in the top inset box, is behind (and just to the right of) a closer, brighter, bluer galaxy. Only through the power of spectroscopy with incredible resolution, capable of separating the two sources, could the nature of the more distant object be determined.
JADES-GS-z14-0 was only found by disentangling this galaxy from a closer galaxy along the same line of sight.
The highly advanced NIRSpec instrument on board the JWST can capture light from a very small part of space. By correctly aiming the telescope, the desired sources, in this case JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1, can be acquired separately from even extremely close, partially overlapping sources.
4.) This new record holder is remarkably, unexpectedly smart.
By merging the spectra of the three most distant galaxies ever discovered on the same graph, JADES-GS-z13-0 (the former record holder), JADES-GS-z14-0 (the current record holder) and JADES-GS- z14-1 (recently discovered together with JADES-GS-z14-0), we can compare the brightness of these three galaxies. The most distant is also the brightest by a factor of 4 or 5, which puzzles astronomers.
The JADES-GS-z14-0 is five times brighter than the previous record holder (JADES-GS-z13-0) and is even shockingly visible to MIRI’s eyes.
This four-panel spread shows four different views of galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 with photometric MIRI data. The fact that this galaxy has so much emission at 7.7 microns suggests that neutral, heated hydrogen (Balmer beta) and doubly ionized oxygen are both present in large quantities.
5.) But this galaxy is extremely dust-poor.
While galaxies found later typically show large amounts of dust, consistent with theories of dust production from supernova events, these two new record-breaking galaxies show evidence for dust produced only by AGB stars, and not by supernovae. This is a mysterious surprise in the new data.
It almost looks like a supernova hasn’t happened in it.
The central region of supernova remnant SN 1987A, first seen by JWST’s NIRCam instrument in 2023. The gaseous and dusty features in the interior of the remnant have been revealed in more detail by JWST than any other observatory before, as core-collapse supernovas are incredible sites for the production of cosmic dust.
With JWST, the past of our universe continues to come into focus.
Even from this zoomed-in view of the JADES field, it is very difficult to distinguish by eye the most distant galaxy ever found, JADES-GS-z14-0. This animation shows its location with a green circle: overlapping with a brighter, bluer, closer galaxy.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals and no more than 200 words.