Galaxy record holder
Webb telescopelaunched last December as a successor Hubbleasuggests that stars may have formed earlier than previously thought. Maybe even a few million years after the big bang.
The latest Webb telescope discoveries were detailed by an international team led by Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in casopise Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Webb telescope has discovered two of the oldest and most distant galaxies in the history of observation
The article is according to a British newspaper The Guardian examines in detail two exceptionally bright galaxies, the first probably formed 350 million years after the Big Bang and the second 450 million years after.
Naidu said the space telescope should make additional infrared verification observations before declaring a new “galactic record.”
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“Although some scientists report detecting galaxies even closer to the origin of the universe, these candidates have yet to be verified,” the researchers said at a news conference. NASA and noted that some of these may be later galaxies mimicking earlier ones.
“There have been many preliminary reports of even earlier galaxies, and we as a community are still trying to figure out which ones might be real,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-author of the new study. paper published.
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They were waiting to be discovered
Tommaso Treu, principal scientist at the Webb Science Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the evidence presented so far for a galaxy that formed 350 million years after the Big Bang was as robust as possible.
NASA Webb project scientist Jane Rigby noted that these galaxies were hidden just below the limits of Hubble’s capabilities. “They were waiting for us there. There are many such galaxies to study,” she told reporters.
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If the results are confirmed and other first galaxies appear, according to the NASA research team, it will be proof that the Webb telescope is very successful in pushing the boundaries of knowledge up to the big bang. ‘One of the most intriguing questions remains when and how the very first galaxies formed,’ the researchers wrote.
The ten-billion-dollar observatory – the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space – is in orbit around the Sun at a distance of 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. Its full scientific activity began in the summer and since then NASA has released a series of dazzling images of space.
