In a recent study submitted to MNRAS, a collaborative research team used the first set of data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover the galaxy candidate CEERS-93316, the Big Bang’s star, formed about 250 million years later, setting a new redshift record of z = 16.7.
The finding is extremely exciting because it demonstrates the power of JWST, which began sending back its first set of data just a few weeks ago. CEERS stands for Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey, and was designed specifically for imaging with JWST.
“The last few weeks have been surreal, seeing all the long-standing Hubble records broken by JWST,” says Dr Rebecca Bowler, Ernst Rutherford Fellow at the University of Manchester, and a co-author. on study. “Finding a z = 16.7 galaxy candidate is an amazing feeling – it was not something we were expecting from the initial data.”
The new study cites a dozen previous studies that have measured objects at redshifts z . 10 using a combination of ground-based observations and with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
“It’s surprising that such a distant candidate galaxy has already been discovered with the Web, as this is only the first of the data,” says Calum Donnan, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh and lead author of the study is a collection.”
“It’s important to note that to be sure about the redshift, the galaxy would need to be followed up with observations using spectroscopy. That’s why we refer to it as a candidate galaxy.
The study determined that CEERS-93316 could not be a low-mass star or an unobstructed active galactic center based on imaging data from the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), JWST’s primary imager.
Because CEERS-93316 may be only 250 million years old, one goal for cosmologists is to learn what’s happening in galaxies that are younger, and just after the Big Bang.
“After the Big Bang the universe entered a period known as the Dark Ages, the time before any stars were conceived,” makes sense of Dr. Bowler.
“The perceptions of this world push the perceptions back to when we think the main cosmic systems were framing. We’ve already found more galaxies in the early universe than computer simulations predict, so clearly this There are many open questions about how and when the first stars and galaxies formed.
Given this incredible finding in just the first set of JWST data, it’s interesting to wonder how many fathers this record-breaking space telescope could see in the universe, and whether it could see the Big Bang itself.
“In principle JWST can detect galaxies at more than 20 redshifts, 200 million years after the Big Bang,” Boller explains. “Finding these cosmic systems will probably be undeniably challenging, however the location of CERRS 93316 gives us trust that they might exist. Watch this space!”
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“The most distant event is the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which is the ‘outerglow’ of the Big Bang,” explains Donnan.
“The light from the CMB dates back to about 400,000 years after the Big Bang and has been observed by various instruments over the years – most notably the Planck satellite which was launched in 2009. Webb won’t be able to see back that far, but It is able to probe the early stages of galaxy formation.
While Donnan and Bowler both said that no further observations are planned for CEERS-93316, they are hopeful that there will be in the future.
The redshift is part of what’s called the Doppler effect, which astronomers use to measure distances in the universe. A frequent example of demonstrating the Doppler effect is the change in sound wave pitch as a loud sound travels toward you then away from you, often by an ambulance or other first responder vehicle.
The sound waves as the object travels towards you is called blueshift while the opposite is called redshift. The new study sets a new redshift record, meaning the most distant object in the universe scientists have ever measured.
