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Image Reveals the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen, From Just 280 Million Years After the Big Bang
The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest find is yet another record-breaker: the most distant galaxy ever detected, shining just 280 million years after the Big Bang.
Named MoM-z14 (cue the “your mama’s so old” jokes), the galaxy was spotted by JWST as part of the Mirage (or Miracle) survey, a program designed to confirm the identities of early galaxies. MoM-z14 clocks in at a redshift of z = 14.4, meaning its light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe by more than 14 times, and offering a clue to its age. The team of researchers, led by MIT’s Rohan Naidu, posted its findings to the preprint server arXiv and has submitted them to the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
This galaxy isn’t just some dim smudge, either—it’s unexpectedly luminous, echoing a growing theme in JWST’s discoveries. MoM-z14 now joins a strange new class of young galaxies that shine far more brightly than anyone expected. JADES-GS-z14-0, discovered in a separate deep field survey, similarly stunned astronomers with its size and brilliance, spanning 1,600 light-years and harboring hundreds of millions of solar masses in stars.
Like JADES-GS-z14-0, MoM-z14 doesn’t appear to be powered by a supermassive black hole, but rather by dense populations of young, luminous stars. The brightness of these objects challenges existing models of how quickly the universe could form stars and galaxies after the Big Bang.
Named MoM-z14 (cue the “your mama’s so old” jokes), the galaxy was spotted by JWST as part of the Mirage (or Miracle) survey, a program designed to confirm the identities of early galaxies. MoM-z14 clocks in at a redshift of z = 14.4, meaning its light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe by more than 14 times, and offering a clue to its age. The team of researchers, led by MIT’s Rohan Naidu, posted its findings to the preprint server arXiv and has submitted them to the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
This galaxy isn’t just some dim smudge, either—it’s unexpectedly luminous, echoing a growing theme in JWST’s discoveries. MoM-z14 now joins a strange new class of young galaxies that shine far more brightly than anyone expected. JADES-GS-z14-0, discovered in a separate deep field survey, similarly stunned astronomers with its size and brilliance, spanning 1,600 light-years and harboring hundreds of millions of solar masses in stars.
Like JADES-GS-z14-0, MoM-z14 doesn’t appear to be powered by a supermassive black hole, but rather by dense populations of young, luminous stars. The brightness of these objects challenges existing models of how quickly the universe could form stars and galaxies after the Big Bang.
https://gizmodo.com/image-reveals-the-most-distant-galaxy-ever-seen-from-just-280-million-years-after-the-big-bang-2000606085
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