Just a week following the reveal of the first images of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful ever designed, it may already have found the most distant galaxy ever observed. It existed 13.5 billion years ago.
Named GLASS-z13, this galaxy appears to us “as it was only regarding 300 million years following the Big Bang, or 100 million years less than the previous observed record” (read box)said Rohan Naidu of Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics.
He is the lead author of a study analyzing data from the early observations of James Webb, which is currently underway. These data are posted online for all astronomers on the planet. One of the main missions of this brand new telescope is to observe the first galaxies formed following the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
This study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but published as a “preprint” in order to be quickly accessible to the expert community. It has been submitted to a scientific journal for forthcoming publication, said Rohan Naidu. Another team also concluded with the same results, which “gives them confidence” in the veracity of the conclusions of this research.
>> The location of GLASS-z13:
The oldest galaxy in the Universe, GLz-13, was discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope. [Naidu et al. 2022, Castellano et al. 2022/T. True (UCLA) and GLASS-JWST/P. Oesch & G. Brammer (UNIGE & Cosmic Dawn Center, NBI, Uni Copenhagen) – NASA/CSA/ESA/STScl]
Fuzzy point in the cosmos
The twenty people who participated in the paper studied two galaxies, the other being called GLASS-z11, less distant. They have surprising characteristics: “They appear quite massive”, according to Rohan Naidu and this, from “very shortly following the Big Bang”. And to add: “It’s something that we don’t really understand”.
Astrophysicist Pascal Oesch, from the Geneva Observatory, also took part in the discovery: he was the one who published the first image – this big fuzzy red circle – of this compact galaxy located around 300 million years later. the Big Bang: “It already has a billion solar masses – that’s a billion stars. We didn’t expect to find a galaxy so massive, so bright, at this distance already in the first data of James Webb”, he remarks by telephone to RTSinfo. He thought he would have to analyze ten times more data before finding such an object.
“It’s a very good surprise!” If many galaxies of this type are confirmed to be so close to the Big Bang, “it will change our view of the Universe”, he adds, enthusiastically. The models did not predict this kind of finding: we will have to review them, according to him, and also try to understand how long such a galaxy was formed.
>> Listen to astrophysicist Pascal Oesch talk regarding the discovery of GLASS-z11:
Impossible to say for the moment: “There is still work”, according to Rohan Naidu, who also noted on Twitter“These two galaxies might already reveal something fascinating to us: a significant number of bright galaxies of a billion solar masses are already in place shortly following the Big Bang”.
And for Pascal Oesch, the record for the oldest galaxy will probably soon be exceeded: “It has already formed a billion solar masses… so we must have something before that!”
Stéphanie Jaquet and the ats
