James Webb Helps Astronomers Look to the Past of the Universe
James Webb first Full-color images help astronomers make a new discovery.
James Webb’s discovery is yet to give us not just a new insight but also a treasure trove of data held by every image it has released.
The first full-color James Webb image, released by President Joe Biden on July 11, reveals a vast network of galaxies and peers billions of years into the past. Within that network, astronomers think they have determined the most far-off globular clusters ever detected, according to a BBC report.
Introducing the Sparkler Galaxy
Globular clusters are dense star collections whose beginnings aren’t entirely comprehended. The Milky Way is the residence of approximately 100 of these compact clusters that are understood to have less heavy chemical elements linked to younger stars such as our Sun. Still, researchers are uncertain exactly how and when they came to be.
The new James Webb image, SMACS 0723, reveals a remote globular cluster amplified by gravitational lensing. Astronomers from the University of Toronto located the cluster and named it “the Sparkler Galaxy” since it’s bordered by small yellow-red dots that resemble sparks. They described their findings in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Those “sparks” would not have appeared to us if it weren’t for the power of James Webb. Thanks to the gravitational lensing in the SMACS 0723 image, the Sparkler Galaxy even appears three times because of strange distorting effects. Gravitational lenses not only amplify far-off objects but additionally distort them and have been found to produce “mirror” images of far-off galaxies.
The team at the University of Toronto initially believed that the “sparks” could be different objects far past or in front of the Sparkler Galaxy. However, having three versions of the Sparkler Galaxy show the same dots highly indicates they are linked.
James Webb looks toward the beginning of time
The astronomers think the sparkles are globular clusters like the ones seen around the Milky Way. Most importantly, however, we’re seeing clusters that are considerably older and were produced much earlier in the history of the Universe.
The image of the Sparkler Galaxy reveals what it looked like nine billion years ago, approximately 4.5 billion years after the Big Bang. The University of Toronto crew detailed that the galaxy cluster is redder than anticipated, suggesting it is older than they would have believed, provided how early it is in the Universe, relatively speaking.
That indicates they assume the globular sparkles developed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. They might also contain some of the first stars developed in the Universe. In an interview with the BBC, one of the astronomers, Dr. Lamiya Mowla from Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, stated, “when we first opened the SMACS image, we too were searching for the furthest stuff, the farthest things. And then we literally got sidetracked by the shiniest, sparkly object.”
Looking at the images, we can understand why even astronomers can get sidetracked, especially when one realizes they are looking into the beginnings of our Universe. The truly remarkable thing is that we may never be able to fully analyze every tiny dot highlighted in immense detail.
Originally published by: Interesting Engineering
