It contained the first scientific-quality image revealed from NASA’s latest space telescope.James WebbOn a hidden treasure in the form of a distant, sparkling galaxy surrounded by dense clusters that might contain some of the universe’s first stars.
That image, which is the first deep-field image from the James Webb Space Telescope, provided an amazing group of galaxies, and a team of Canadian astronomers zoomed in on a galaxy located 9 billion light-years away from Earth, which it called the “Sparkler Galaxy” because The surrounding compact objects appear as tiny shimmering yellow-red dots. The galaxy itself has a strange, stretchy appearance, but the surrounding objects that inspired the nickname are of particular scientific interest, as they might be the most globular star clusters astronomers have ever found.
Globular clusters are groups of ancient stars that date back to the beginning of the galaxy, so they can contain clues regarding the early stages of galaxy formation, growth and evolution. They are indeed globular. Furthermore, these might be some of the oldest globular clusters ever seen, possibly dating back to the time when the universe first began giving birth to stars.
“According to our analysis, we found that most of these luminosity around the main body of the galaxy are really massive and ancient star systems,” said Karthik J. Iyer, an astronomer at the University of Toronto in Canada and co-lead author of the study. “It was really surprising to us that we were able to find such The unique body is very early in the JWST data.”
The JWST image allowed the team to detect “sparkles” across a range of wavelengths, Ayer noted, meaning that scientists might accurately model the clusters to better understand their physical properties, including their age and the number of stars they contain. It is possible to date the first stars in distant early galaxies before JWST.
“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to date all the objects in the universe, stars and galaxies and globular clusters, because we want to know, when the stars started appearing,” explained Lamia Mola, co-author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Toronto.
The Milky Way contains an estimated 150 globular clusters, but scientists have struggled to determine their ages, and Molla explained that while it is relatively easy to date most things in our galaxy, this is not the case with the particularly ancient, seemingly ancient stuff. Already when looking at it up close.
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