Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Zoom into stunning James Webb image to see a galaxy formed 13.4 billion years ago

Georgina Torbet
By

One of the amazing things about the James Webb Space Telescope is the level of detail it is able to capture of very distant objects — but it can be hard to picture what that means when the distances being considered are so large. Now, a new visualization gives a feel of just how detailed the data from the telescope is, by showing how it’s possible to start with a stunning view of thousands of galaxies and zoom closer and closer in until you reach just one.

CEERS: Flight to Maisie's Galaxy

The visualization uses data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey, which searches large areas of the sky to look for some of the earliest galaxies. That means it needs images of large regions, but it also needs data on each individual galaxy to look for the large redshifts which indicate a very distant (and therefore very old) galaxy. The visualization shows a small part of a region called the Extended Groth Strip, which contains over 100,000 galaxies in total.

A section of a James Webb image showing a small part of the Extended Groth Strip, located between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations.
A section of a James Webb image showing a small part of the Extended Groth Strip, located between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations. Visualization Frank Summers (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Science Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (RIT), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin)

The galaxy that the visualization zooms in toward is called Maisie’s Galaxy, which is from just 390 million years after the big bang and was named after the daughter of one of the researchers.

Recommended Videos

“This observatory just opens up this entire period of time for us to study,” said one of the survey’s investigators, Rebecca Larson of the Rochester Institute of Technology, in a statement. “We couldn’t study galaxies like Maisie’s before because we couldn’t see them. Now, not only are we able to find them in our images, we’re able to find out what they’re made of and if they differ from the galaxies that we see close by.”

Related

One open question is about the formation of early galaxies, as research with Webb has shown that early galaxies are bigger and brighter than expected.

“This observation exceeded our expectations. The sheer number of galaxies that we’re finding in the early universe is at the upper end of all predictions,” said researcher Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin.

Future research could help address these open questions, Finkelstein said: “Are these galaxies forming more stars than expected? Are the stars they’re making more massive than we expect? These data have given us the information to ask these questions. Now, we need more data to get those answers.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
James Webb provides a second view of an exploded star
A new high-definition image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) unveils intricate details of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), and shows the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded. The most noticeable colors in Webb’s newest image are clumps of bright orange and light pink that make up the inner shell of the supernova remnant. These tiny knots of gas, comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself, are only detectable by NIRCam’s exquisite resolution, and give researchers a hint at how the dying star shattered like glass when it exploded.

When massive stars run out of fuel and come to the ends of their lives, their final phase can be a massive explosion called a supernova. Although the bright flash of light from these events quickly fades, other effects are longer-lasting. As the shockwaves from these explosions travel out into space and interact with nearby dust and gas, they can sculpt beautiful objects called supernova remnants.

One such supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was recently imaged using the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument. Located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, it is thought to be a star that exploded 340 years ago (as seen from Earth) and it is now one of the brightest radio objects in the sky. This view shows the shell of material thrown out by the explosion interacting with the gas that the massive star gave off in its last phases of life.

Read more
James Webb telescope captures a dramatic image of newborn star
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars. This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

A new image of a Herbig-Haro object captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the dramatic outflows from a young star. These luminous flares are created when stellar winds shoot off in opposite directions from newborn stars, as the jets of gas slam into nearby dust and gas at tremendous speed. These objects can be huge, up to several light-years across, and they glow brightly in the infrared wavelengths in which James Webb operates.

This image shows Herbig-Haro object HH 797, which is located close to the IC 348 star cluster, and is also nearby to another Herbig-Haro object that Webb captured recently: HH 211.

Read more
James Webb finds that rocky planets could form in extreme radiation environment
This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming.

It takes a particular confluence of conditions for rocky planets like Earth to form, as not all stars in the universe are conducive to planet formation. Stars give off ultraviolet light, and the hotter the star burns, the more UV light it gives off. This radiation can be so significant that it prevents planets from forming from nearby dust and gas. However, the James Webb Space Telescope recently investigated a disk around a star that seems like it could be forming rocky planets, even though nearby massive stars are pumping out huge amounts of radiation.

The disk of material around the star, called a protoplanetary disk, is located in the Lobster Nebula, one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. This region hosts massive stars that give off so much radiation that they can eat through a disk in as little as a million years, dispersing the material needed for planets to form. But the recently observed disk, named XUE 1, seems to be an exception.

Read more