13 billion-year-old ‘Maisie’s galaxy’ is one of the oldest objects in the universe, James Webb telescope reveals

Astronomers utilizing the James Webb House Telescope (JWST) have confirmed {that a} distant smudge of sunshine named for a fortunate birthday lady on Earth is without doubt one of the earliest identified galaxies within the universe.

The thing — named “Maisie’s galaxy” in honor of lead researcher Steven Finkelstein‘s daughter, who was celebrating her birthday when the item was found final yr — started emitting mild greater than 13 billion years in the past, or roughly 390 million years after the Large Bang, the crew discovered. This spectacular age, reported Aug. 14 within the journal Nature, locations Maisie’s galaxy amongst the 4 oldest galaxies within the universe which have had their ages confirmed by spectroscopy, a method that splits mild into its element frequencies to higher reveal its brightness, warmth and chemical composition.

“The thrilling factor about Maisie’s galaxy is that it was one of many first distant galaxies recognized by JWST, and of that set, it is the primary to truly be spectroscopically confirmed,” Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy on the College of Texas at Austin, stated in a assertion.

Associated: 32 jaw-dropping James Webb House Telescope photographs

First detected in August 2022 throughout JWST’s debut season of observations, the distant object was presumed to be extraordinarily previous based mostly on its brightness and redshift, the diploma to which mild stretches into redder wavelengths because it crosses the ever-expanding universe. Typically, a larger redshift signifies an older, extra distant mild supply.

Nonetheless, judging an object’s redshift by the brightness of its mild alone could be misleading, as completely different components inside stars and galaxies emit mild at completely different frequencies, a few of which may make an object seem older and farther away than it actually is. To see previous this cosmic mirage, astronomers use spectroscopy to separate starlight into its varied frequencies, revealing what it is actually fabricated from.

Utilizing the JWST’s Close to Infrared Spectrograph, the examine authors parsed the sunshine of two historic objects: Maisie’s galaxy and CEERS-93316, one other galaxy that was found across the similar time and was initially estimated to exist simply 250 million years after the Large Bang.

Whereas the crew’s spectroscopic evaluation confirmed that Maisie’s galaxy is certainly as distant and historic as its brightness suggests, the identical was not true for CEERS-93316. After splitting the galaxy’s mild, the researchers discovered that globs of sizzling hydrogen and oxygen contained there have been emitting mild so intensely that they made the entire galaxy seem bluer — and therefore older — than it truly was. The crew’s revised estimate places CEERS-93316 at about 1 billion years after the Large Bang — knocking it firmly off the record of oldest identified galaxies.

“This was a sort of bizarre case,” Finkelstein stated. “Of the numerous tens of excessive redshift candidates which were noticed spectroscopically, that is the one occasion of the true redshift being a lot lower than our preliminary guess.”

In the meantime, Maisie’s galaxy joins a brief record of 4 different galaxies, additionally found and spectroscopically confirmed by the JWST, that fashioned between 300 million and 500 million years after the start of space-time as we all know it. The invention is probably not as candy as birthday cake — but it surely’s a present that can hopefully final a lot, for much longer.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.