18 April 2023, Bengaluru, India
Humanity’s one-of-a-kind innovation, the James Webb Space Telescope, has made discoveries of the most ancient galaxies of our universe that formed billions of years before the birth of Earth. It is being reported that the galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope are among the first ones to exist after our universe came into existence. The discovered galaxies came into existence nearly 13 billion years ago when the universe was only 2 percent of its current state.
This discovery of such ancient galaxies is an achievement for scientists and researchers across the globe. The James Webb Telescope conducts infrared astronomy. The Hubble Telescope is equipped with the best instruments. It has high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint.
The recent discoveries were possible because of the high-quality instruments James Webb Telescope contains. It caught the light that was emitted by the ancient galaxies that began traveling 13.4 billion years ago. The lights reached the James Webb Telescope, located 15 lakh kilometers away from Earth. Data acquired from the Webb Telescope gives scientists and researchers an approximation of when the galaxies were exactly formed. As per the data, the galaxies date back to the time when our universe came into life, that is, nearly 400 million years after the Big Bang occurred. These data have been confirmed by the use of spectroscopic observations made by the James Webb Telescope.
“It was crucial to prove that these galaxies do, indeed, inhabit the early universe. It’s very possible for closer galaxies to masquerade as very distant galaxies. Seeing the spectrum revealed as we hoped, confirming these galaxies as being at the true edge of our view, some further away than Hubble could see! It is a tremendously exciting achievement for the mission,” Emma Curtis-Lake said in a statement.
Emma is an Astronomer and a co-author hailing from the University of Hertfordshire. “These observations revealed characteristic and distinctive patterns in the fingerprints of light coming from these faraway worlds,” reported a scientist.
The James Webb Telescope was part of a mission for which it was making various observations to find some crucial data regarding deep space findings. The observations made were a part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey. This mission aims to provide a view of the early universe that is unparalleled in both depth and detail.
“For the first time, we have discovered galaxies only 350 million years after the big bang, and we can be absolutely confident of their fantastic distances. To find these early galaxies in such stunningly beautiful images is a special experience,” Brant Robertson, a co-author, said about the great discovery.
As per reports, the James Webb Telescope that was on the mission studied the piece of sky for nearly 10 days before producing the first images of the discovered galaxies. These images were 15 times larger than the deepest infrared images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, and yet these images were deeper and sharper at these wavelengths.
Source –IndiaToday, Wikipedia
