For the first time, new images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed galaxies with stellar lattices when the universe was a quarter of its current age.
Stellar bars are elongated features of stars that extend from the centers of galaxies to their outer disks. They push gas into the central regions, fueling star formation.
The University of Texas said in a statement that the discovery of barred galaxies requires scientists to completely adjust their theories of galaxy evolution, noting that the Hubble Space Telescope has never detected bars at such young ages.
For example, while the galaxy EGS-23205 appears fuzzy in the Hubble image, the Webb image reveals a spiral galaxy with a clearer star line.
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JWST’s ability to map galaxies at higher resolution and longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it to peer through dust and reveal the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in two images of the galaxy EGS23205 as it was 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, near-infrared filter) the galaxy is nothing more than a disk-shaped blob covered in dust and affected by the glow of young stars, but in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (pictured) it is past summer), this is a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear star line.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
The James Webb Space Telescope has a larger mirror, which gives it the ability to collect more light and allows it to see farther with higher resolution.
As he observed Longer infrared wavelengths than Hubbleit can also see dust better.
Shardha Jogi, a professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, described the data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science in a statement: “I took one look at this data and said, ‘We’re going to throw everything else away!'” Research (CEERS).
Dave Chaney, principal optical test engineer at Ball Aerospace, inspects six primary mirror segments, critical elements of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, before cryogenic testing at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
(Credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham)
Another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, is also located about 11 billion years ago, making the two barred galaxies much more distant than previously discovered.
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In an article in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers singled out these galaxies and showed examples of four other galaxies from 8 billion years ago.
A montage of JWST images showing examples of six barred galaxies, two of which have been quantitatively detected and represent the highest revisit time described to date. The labels in the upper left of each figure indicate the revision time of each galaxy, between 8.4 and 11 billion years ago (Gyr), when the Universe was only 40% to 20% of its current age.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
Two undergraduate students played a key role by visually inspecting hundreds of galaxies and searching for those that could be analyzed with a more rigorous mathematical approach.
Bars also help the formation of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and direct the gas part of the path.
The presence of these bars complicates theoretical models, the university says, and the team will test different models in additional work.
“The discovery of these early bars means that galaxy evolution models now have a new path through the bar to accelerate the formation of new stars at early times,” Jogi said.