Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Looking back on some of the universe’s oldest galaxies with James Webb

By

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to astonish, with early data from one of its survey projects providing a tantalizing glimpse at some extremely distant and extremely old galaxies. Early data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) has been compiled into a stunning view of a field of galaxies including one of the most distant galaxies yet observed. This galaxy could have a redshift of 14, referring to the degree to which light is shifted to the red end of the spectrum by the expansion of the universe.

This image is part of a larger mosaic taken with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s from a patch of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper. This is one of the first images obtained by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) collaboration.
This image is part of a larger mosaic taken with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s from a patch of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper. This is one of the first images obtained by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) collaboration. NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay

This finding of a galaxy with a redshift of more than 14 puts it as even more distant than another distant galaxy discovered by Webb which recently made headlines, as that one had a redshift of 13. The magnitude of the redshift of a galaxy is denoted using the letter z, with redshifts of more than 8 indicating that the light from an object has traveled for more than 13 billion years, for example. However, that doesn’t mean that an object with a redshift of 8 is 13 billion light-years away — as the universe has been expanding during all that time, such an object would in fact be more than 25 billion light-years away.

Recommended Videos

Finding an object with a redshift of 14 is unprecedented, and it indicates that we are looking back at a galaxy that formed within just 290 million years after the Big Bang. This was during a period called the Epoch of Reionization when the hydrogen began to be ionized and the first light shone through the universe.

Related

The finding is also intriguing as it suggests that these very distant galaxies could be more common than predicted, meaning there is a great opportunity for studying them. “These images are exciting because the sheer number of these really high redshift galaxy candidates is larger than we expected,” said one of the authors, Jeyhan Kartaltepe of Rochester Institute of Technology, in a statement. “We knew we’d find some, but I don’t think anybody thought we’d find as many as we have. It either means the universe works a little bit differently than we thought or there’s a lot of other contaminating sources and these candidates will turn out to be something else. The reality is probably a mix of both.”

The research will be published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available to view on the pre-print archive arXiv.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
One galaxy, two views: see a comparison of images from Hubble and Webb
The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two spiral galaxies which likely occurred 500 million years ago, and it is studded with clumps of young stars which were formed as gas and dust from the two galaxies collided.

It might not seem obvious why astronomers need multiple different powerful space telescopes. Surely a more powerful telescope is better than a less powerful one? So why are there multiple different telescopes in orbit, either around Earth or around the sun?

The answer is to do with two main factors. One is the telescope's field of view, meaning how much of the sky it looks at. Some telescopes are useful for looking at large areas of the sky in less detail, working as survey telescopes to identify objects for further research or to look at the universe on a large scale -- like the recently launched Euclid mission. While others, like the Hubble Space Telescope, look at small areas of the sky in great detail, which is useful for studying particular objects.

Read more
James Webb spots the most distant active supermassive black hole ever discovered
Crop of Webb's CEERS Survey image.

As well as observing specific objects like distant galaxies and planets here in our solar system, the James Webb Space Telescope is also being used to perform wide-scale surveys of parts of the sky. These surveys observe large chunks of the sky to identify important targets like very distant, very early galaxies, as well as observe intriguing objects like black holes. And one such survey has recently identified the most distant active supermassive black hole seen so far.

While a typical black hole might have a mass up to around 10 times that of the sun, supermassive black holes are much more massive, with a mass that can be millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun. These monsters are found at the heart of galaxies and are thought to play important roles in the formation and merging of galaxies.

Read more
Saturn as you’ve never seen it before, captured by Webb telescope
Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

NASA has shared a gorgeous image of Saturn captured recently by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Webb’s first near-infrared observations of the second largest planet in our solar system also show several of Saturn’s moons: Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys.

Read more