Posted: 17:27, July 20, 2022 | Updated: 17:29, 20 July 2022
NASA’s James Webb Telescope (JWST) has revealed a 13.5-billion-year-old galaxy that is now the oldest universe seen by human eyes. The galaxy, called GLASS-z13 (GN-z13), formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago. The previous record holder, discovered by the Hubble telescope in 2015, was GN-z11 dating back 400 million years after the birth of the universe. JWST captured a glimpse of GN-z13 using its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, which is capable of detecting live from the earliest stars and galaxies. Scroll down for videos NASA’s James Webb Telescope (JWST) has revealed a 13.5-billion-year-old galaxy that is now the oldest universe seen by human eyes. The galaxy, called GLASS-z13 (GN-z13), formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago While probing the region near GN-z13, JWST also spotted GN-z11, and scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts note that both galaxies are very small, New Scientist reports. GN-z13 is about 1,600 light-years across and GLASS z-11 is 2,300 light-years across. This compares to our own Milky Way which is about 100,000 light years across. The paper, published on arXiv, notes that both galaxies have a mass of one billion suns, noting that this is because they formed shortly after the Big Bang. While probing the region near GN-z13 (top), JWST also spotted GN-z11 (bottom), and scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts note that both galaxies are very small The previous record holder, discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2015, is GN-z11 (pictured) dating back 400 million years after the birth of the universe The team suggests that this happened as galaxies grew and gobbled up stars in the region. “These two objects already set new constraints on the evolution of galaxies in the cosmic dawn era,” the researchers said in the paper. They indicate that the discovery of GNz11 was not just a matter of luck, but that there is likely a population of bright UV sources with very high star formation efficiencies capable of being assembled. Gabriel Brammer at the Niehls Bohr Institute in Denmark, a member of the GLASS team and co-discoverer of GN-z11, told New Scientist that further analysis will be needed to confirm the distance of the two galaxies. “They are very compelling candidates,” he says. “We were pretty confident that JWST would see distant galaxies. But we’re a little surprised how easy it is to spot them.’ Brammer made headlines this week when he released a never-before-seen photo taken by JWST. The paper notes that both galaxies have a mass of one billion suns, noting that this is because they formed shortly after the Big Bang. In the photo are the locations of the galaxies Gabriel Brammer, member of the GLASS team and co-discoverer of GN-z11, said further analysis would be needed to confirm the distance to the two galaxies. Brammer made headlines this week when he released a never-before-seen photo taken by JWST (pictured) The astronomer shared a stunning photo of the spiral arms of the ‘ghost galaxy’, officially known as NGC 628 or Messier 74. Webb took the image of NGC 628 on July 17 and sent the data back to Earth, where it was stored in the Barbara Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, (MAST), which is open to the public. Brammer’s image caught the attention of other astronomers and space enthusiasts, who wanted to know more about how he made the image and what it was they were looking at. “For a bit more context, the purple color cast here is actually ‘real’ in the sense that emission from interstellar cigarette smoke (PAH molecules) makes the filters used for the blue and red channels brighter than the green,” Brammer wrote. in a tweet.
JAMES WEBB’S TELESCOPE
The James Webb Telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unlock the secrets of our universe. The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our solar system. The massive telescope, which has already cost more than $7bn (£5bn), is seen as a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of about 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius). It is the largest and most powerful orbiting space telescope in the world, capable of looking back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang. The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work together for a while. The Hubble Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It orbits the Earth at about 17,000 mph (27,300 km/h) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.
