helps James Webb Telescope The Space Telescope (JWST) has helped scientists unravel the mystery of spiral galaxies and has taken a detailed picture of many galaxies belonging to the early universe from a period known as the “cosmic noon”.
The period was between eight to 10 billion years ago when the galaxies formed regarding half of their current stellar mass, making this group the most distant that can be seen by the human eye, according to the RT report.
While the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope have provided observations of these twisted groups of stars and gas, JWST’s ability to capture incredible detail will allow scientists to understand their detailed shapes and properties. One of the three galaxies detected by JWST is a negative spiral galaxy that does not generate new stars, and the discovery might reveal that this rare spiral galaxy is abundant throughout the universe.
Red spiral galaxies are rare, representing only 2% of galaxies in the local universe, and the color usually means that they formed in the early universe.
For this reason, astronomers search for these formations, hoping they can tell us more secrets regarding the early universe.
Using JWST’s powerful mechanics, NASA hopes to reconstruct the star formation history of this galaxy that it believes formed billions of years ago – not long following the Big Bang.
JWST captured three solenoids during deep space exploration: RS12, RS13 and RS14, all in the field of SMACS 0723.
The morphology of spiral galaxies is of great interest because it “provides insight into the mechanism of galaxy formation, when observed over cosmic time,” according to scientists at Waseda University in Japan, who led the research.
Using spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis, the researchers measured the energy distribution over a wide wavelength range of these galaxies.
The results revealed that the red spirals formed at least three billion years following the Big Bang, the moment the universe began.
One detailed image shows a negative spiral galaxy, which contradicts the idea that all such formations in the early universe would be active.
“Overall, the results of this study greatly enhance our knowledge of red spiral galaxies, and the universe as a whole. Our study showed for the first time that negative spiral galaxies might be abundant in the early universe,” junior researcher Yoshinobu Fudamoto said in a statement.
While this paper is an empirical study of spiral galaxies in the early universe, confirmation and expansion of this study will greatly influence our understanding of the formation and evolution of galactic shapes.
JWST took other pictures of spiral galaxies, with one revealing the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, 489.2 million light-years from Earth.
JWST’s infrared capabilities mean it can ‘see past time’ within just 100 to 200 million years of the Big Bang, allowing it to take pictures of the first stars to shine in the universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.
Its first images of nebulae, extrasolar planets and galaxies sparked huge celebrations in the scientific world as the “great day of humanity” was hailed.
Researchers will soon begin to learn more regarding the masses, ages, history and compositions of galaxies as the telescope seeks to explore the oldest galaxies in the universe.
