The existence of the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever observed confirmed the scientists, through their systematic observations on Pandora galaxy clusterwhich recorded the space telescope “James Webb.” The galaxies are described in a publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
An international team, led by researchers of Pennsylvania State Universityconfirmed the distance of these ancient galaxies and deduced their properties using new spectroscopic data from the telescope.
Unlike other galaxies confirmed at this distance, young galaxies are larger. As reported by APE – MEB, one is elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball. Although they are expected to have been formed from similar materials, they show signs that they are very different from each other.
The research team estimates that the lightdetected by the telescope, emitted from the two galaxies when the universe was about 330 million years old and traveled about 13.4 billion light-years to reach James Webb. Nevertheless, galaxies are currently 33 billion light-years away from Earth, due to the expansion of the universe during this time. Incredibly distant galaxies offer insights into how the first galaxies may have formed.
“The light from these galaxies is ancient, about three times older than Earthsays Joel Leya, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University.
“Before our analysis, we knew of only three galaxies that had been confirmed at about this extreme distance,” explains first author Bingzhi Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University.
It is worth noting that the two galaxies are significantly larger than the three previously identified galaxies at these extreme distances. One is at least six times larger with a diameter of about 2,000 light years. As the early universe is thought to have been very compressed, it is surprising, according to Wang, that the galaxy is so large.
The two galaxies were among 60,000 light sources in the Pandora’s Swarm detected in one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first deep-field images during 2022, its first year of scientific operation. Within months the research team narrowed down the 60,000 bright sources to 700 candidates for further study, eight of which they thought could possibly be among the first galaxies. The telescope then turned again to the Pandora Cluster recording the spectra of the candidate light sources.
Source: News Beast
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