A young (and old) galaxy continues to form stars

Using first-of-its-kind observations by the James Webb Space Telescope, a team from the University of Minnesota looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover one small galaxy that was generating new stars at an extremely high rate for its size.

The galaxy is one Who is the youngest? Discovered at this distance — about 500 million years after the Big Bang — it could help astronomers learn more about the galaxies that existed shortly after the beginning of the universe.

Scientific article was published in Science Magazine. University of Minnesota researchers were among the first teams to study a distant galaxy using the James Webb Space Telescope, and their results are among the first to be published.

Studying galaxies that existed when the universe was much younger can help scientists get closer to answering a huge astronomy question about How do you ionize the universeBut observing these distant objects can be a challenge.

In this case, the researchers were able to find and study this small galaxy because A phenomenon called gravitational lensing Where mass, such as the mass of a galaxy or galaxy cluster, bends and magnifies the light.

The cluster of galaxies acting as a lens has caused this small background galaxy to appear 20 times brighter than it would otherwise be If not the swarm amplifies its light. The researchers used spectroscopy to measure the galaxy’s distance, as well as its physical and chemical properties.

“This galaxy out of reach of all telescopes Except for James Webb, these first observations of a galaxy far, far away are amazing.” Patrick Kelly, senior author of the paper and assistant professor in the university of minnesota college of science and engineering.

“Here, we are able to see Most of the way back to the Big Bang And we never looked at galaxies in such detail when the universe was so young. The galaxy is about one-millionth the size of the Milky Way, but we can see that it still forms the same number of stars every year. “

The James Webb Space Telescope can collect approx 10 times the light From the Hubble Space Telescope more sensitive For longer, redder wavelengths in the infrared spectrum. According to the researchers, this allows scientists to access a whole new window of data.

“The galaxies that existed when the universe was very in its infancy different from what we see now in the near universe Hayley Williamsfirst author of the science article and doctoral student at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics.

This discovery can help us learn more about the properties of these early galaxies. How is it different from neighboring galaxies? How did the oldest galaxies form?