Madrid. New images from the space telescope james webb They show what may be one of the most distant galaxies ever observed, shown as a pinpoint of light by its predecessor, Hubble.
They include objects older than 13 billion years and offer a much wider field of view than the first deep-field image, which was released amid great anticipation on July 12.
These are some of the first images obtained within the Ceers project (acronym for the English Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey, a survey with the first scientific results on cosmic evolution), a collaboration that, using the new space telescope, studies how some of the first galaxies when the universe was less than 5 percent of its current age, during a period known as reionization.
Made up of 18 co-investigators from 12 institutions, including Pablo G. Pérez González, from the Center for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA), Ceers also has more than 100 collaborators from 10 other countries.
Thus, in the first week of data analysis, the team identified a particularly interesting object: a galaxy they named Maisie, after the daughter of project manager Steven Finkelstein. It is estimated that it existed only 300 million years after the Big Bang, CAB reported in a statement.
The data, which took about 24 hours to collect, is from a patch of sky near the tail of the Big Dipper. This same area of the sky was observed before by the Hubble, in what is known as the Extended Groth Fringe.
“It is amazing to see how what for Hubble it was a pinpoint of light now for webb it becomes a complete galaxy with beautiful structures. Not only that, but other galaxies emerge out of nowhere,” said Finkelstein, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin and principal investigator for Ceers.
The project’s extremely sharp images have not only revealed distant galaxies, but also show many interesting and beautiful objects, revealing the complexity of the evolution of galaxies throughout the life of the universe: some look like elegant windmills, others they are like small beings at the beginning of their lives, others show interactions with their neighbors that deform or even destroy them, and some more are distributed in the sky as if it were a Pac-Man.
MIRI is an instrument that works in the mid-infrared range and was developed by a European consortium in which the CAB (CSIC-INTA) participated. It operates at a much higher spatial resolution than previous mid-infrared telescopes.
Compared to NIRcam, MIRI has a smaller field of view, but detects longer wavelengths, allowing the astrophysicist community to see cosmic dust shining from star-forming galaxies and black holes at great distances, as well as see the light of the oldest stars in distant galaxies.
“The MIRI images are impressive, eight times sharper than what we had until now,” said Pérez González. The CAB (CSIC-INTA) researcher, an expert in the study of the evolution of galaxies at different cosmological distances with infrared data, added that “in each great astrophysical mission that begins, the universe surprises us. We always think that we are already getting so close to the big Bang that the galaxies must be very young and we should almost detect the first one, but james webb it is revealing to us very large galaxies already quite evolved. The universe has been almost all its life superefficient forming galaxies. Not only that: also complex chemical elements and compounds, which must have an effect on the appearance of life”.
The Ceers program consists of more than 60 hours of telescope time, almost half of which has been completed so far. In December it will be completed, adding much more imaging data along with spectroscopic measurements of hundreds of distant galaxies.
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