A team of astronomers has used the ALMA telescope to find a slowly rotating galaxy in the early universe.
That galaxy is the youngest ever found with a measured rotation, and is much slower than present-day galaxies.
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But astronomers still don’t understand how galaxies form at these speeds. The only way to tell is to map galaxy evolution by measuring galaxies over cosmic time.
Recently, a team of astronomers based at Waseda University in Tokyo used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile to observe the most distant galaxy.
This galaxy, MACS1149-JD1, is so far away that it is usually too dim to observe. But light from this galaxy passes through a massive galaxy cluster,
and gravitational lensing from that cluster magnifies MACS1149-JD1. Astronomers can use this magnification to view galaxies.
Measuring galaxy rotation
MACS1149-JD1 existed when the universe was only 500 million years old, making it one of the youngest galaxies. The group utilized ALMA to concentrate on O III, or doubly ionized oxygen, in the system’s circle.
They then developed a model of the size and rotation speed of the galaxy’s disk to compare with observations. They reported their findings in a paper recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The team found that MACS1149-JD1 spans only 3,000 light-years. It is much smaller than the Milky Way galaxy, which spans 100,000 light years. They also found that MACS1149-JD1 rotates at just 50 km/s, less than a quarter of the Milky Way’s rotation speed.
“The revolution speed of JD1 is a lot more slow than that of worlds tracked down in later periods and our [Milky Way] universe, and almost certainly, JD1 is in the beginning phases of creating rotational movement,” said Akio K. Inoue. , says one member. – Dissertation creator, likewise at Waseda University.
These outcomes propose that worlds begin little and pivot gradually. Then, over billions of years, they accumulate more matter and increase their rotation rate. The team hopes to use the James Webb Space Telescope to study further the galaxy’s rotation rates over cosmic time.
