Posted on by Matt Williams

Remember those Impossible Galaxies Found by JWST? It Turns Out They Were Possible After All

This is a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. It is filled with galaxies. The light from some of them has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach the telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (University of Texas at Austin)

When the James Webb Space Telescope provided astronomers with a glimpse of the earliest galaxies in the Universe, there was some understandable confusion. Given that these galaxies existed during “Cosmic Dawn,” less than one billion years after the Big Bang, they seemed “impossibly large” for their age. According to the most widely accepted cosmological model—the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model—the first galaxies in the Universe did not have enough time to become so massive and should have been more modestly sized.

This presented astronomers with another “crisis in cosmology,” suggesting that the predominant model about the origins and evolution of the Universe was wrong. However, according to a new study by an international team of astronomers, these galaxies are not so “impossibly large” after all, and what we saw may have been the result of an optical illusion. In short, the presence of black holes in some of these early galaxies made them appear much brighter and larger than they actually were. This is good news for astronomers and cosmologists who like the LCDM the way it is!

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Posted on by Evan Gough

Almost a Third of Early Galaxies Were Already Spirals

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. New JWST observations of the early Universe are upending our understanding of galaxy evolution. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

In the years before the JWST’s launch, astronomers’ efforts to understand the early Universe were stymied by a stubborn obstacle: the light from the early Universe was red-shifted to an extreme degree. The JWST was built with extreme redshifts in mind, and one of its goals was to study Galaxy Assembly.

Once the JWST activated its segmented, beryllium eye, the Universe’s most ancient, red-shifted light became visible.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

JWST Accidentally Found 21 Brown Dwarfs

This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026, observed by NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the mass required to become stars. Image credit: NASA
This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026, observed by NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the mass required to become stars. Image credit: NASA

When you launch humanity’s most powerful telescope, you expect results. The JWST has delivered excellent results by detecting ancient galaxies, identifying chemicals in exoplanet atmospheres, and peering into star-forming regions with more detail and clarity than any other telescope.

But every time a new telescope is about to enter service, astronomers tell us they’re excited not only about the expected results but also about the surprising results. And like other telescopes, the JWST has also delivered some surprises. While going about its business, the JWST has discovered 21 brown dwarfs.

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Posted on by Matt Williams

You’re Looking at One of the Farthest Confirmed Galaxies Found by JWST

Scientists with the CEERS Collaboration have identified an object (Maisie’s galaxy) that may be one of the earliest and farthest galaxies ever observed. Credit: NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay.
Scientists with the CEERS Collaboration have identified an object (Maisie’s galaxy) that may be one of the earliest and farthest galaxies ever observed. Credit: NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay.

One of the main objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to use its powerful optics and advanced instruments to observe the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These galaxies formed about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, coinciding with the end of what is known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages.” This epoch is inaccessible for conventional optical telescopes because the only sources of photons were largely associated with the relic radiation of the Big Bang – visible today as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – or were the result of the reionization of neutral hydrogen (visible today the 21 cm line).

Thanks to its advanced optics and infrared imaging capabilities, Webb has pushed the boundaries of how far astronomers and cosmologists can see. One of the most interesting finds was Maisie’s galaxy, which appeared to have existed roughly 390 million years after the Big Bang. According to a new study by the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) that recently appeared in Nature, these results have since been confirmed. This makes Maisie’s galaxy one of the farthest (and earliest) confirmed galaxies ever observed by human eyes.

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Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Here’s the Largest Image JWST Has Taken So Far

Image of CEERS scientists looking at the Epoch 1 NIRCam color mosaic in TACC's visualization lab at UT Austin. Credit: R. Larson

A team of scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have just released the largest image taken by the telescope so far. The image is a mosaic of 690 individual frames taken with the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and it covers an area of sky about eight times as large as JWST’s First Deep Field Image released on July 12. And it is absolutely FULL of stunning early galaxies, many never seen before. Additionally, the team may have photographed one of the most distant galaxies yet observed.

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Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 3, 2018: Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey

Hosts:
Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)
Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter)
Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )
Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)

Special Guest:
Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Rochester Institute of Technology, and is the Deputy Director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. She is also a leading member of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey team that has been selected as part of the James Webb Space Telescope Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science Program. It is one of 13 science teams that will use the $8 billion telescope first, conducting experiments during its initial cycle and testing the instruments’ capabilities.

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