Astronomers using the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have obtained the spectrum of JADES-GS-z14-0, a record-breaking galaxy observed only 290 million years after the Big Bang. This corresponds to a redshift of about 14, which is a measure of how much a galaxy’s light is stretched by the expansion of the Universe.
Lying in the constellation of Fornax, JADES-GS-z14-0 was discovered by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES).
The galaxy is unexpectedly luminous and is resolved with a radius of 260 parsecs (848 light-years).
The discovery proves that luminous galaxies were already in place 300 million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected before Webb.
“The instruments on Webb were designed to find and understand the earliest galaxies, and in the first year of observations as part of JADES, we found many hundreds of candidate galaxies from the first 650 million years after the Big Bang,” said Dr. Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Dr. Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson.
“In early 2023, we discovered a galaxy in our data that had strong evidence of being above a redshift of 14, which was very exciting, but there were some properties of the source that made us wary.”
“The source was surprisingly bright, which we wouldn’t expect for such a distant galaxy, and it was very close to another galaxy such that the two appeared to be part of one larger object.”
“When we observed the source again in October 2023 as part of the JADES Origins Field, new imaging data obtained with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) filters pointed even more toward the high-redshift hypothesis.”
“We knew we needed a spectrum, as whatever we would learn would be of immense scientific importance, either as a new milestone in Webb’s investigation of the early Universe or as a confounding oddball of a…
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