2023-08-03 15:16:45
Hubble could only guess them. The James-Webb Space Telescope has just brought them to light. A host of distant galaxies, a primitive cluster and even the most distant red giant star ever observed!
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[EN VIDÉO] The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope Discover the first images sent by NASA of the JWST, the space telescope with…
In Spanish, ” Fat “ means ” the big “. This is why this nickname was assigned to the cluster of galaxies ACT-CL J0102-4915. Because it is quite simply the largest cluster known to date in the distant universe. Understand, in our Universe as it appeared just over 6 billion years ago. This places El Gordo some 7 billion light-years from our Earth.
And an new picture reflected by the James-Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows this cluster of a hundred galaxies in a new light. With galaxies emerging clearly when they could only barely be guessed at in the best images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers are particularly interested in it for the gravitational lensing effect it produces and which they can take advantage of to discover background objects.
The first distant red giant star revealed by the James-Webb Space Telescope
Among them is a galaxy — frame B, above — some 10.6 billion years old. Deformed by gravitational lensing, it is nicknamed “The hook”. It owes its red color both to its dust and to the extreme distance at which it is located from us. Distortion corrected, the galaxy appears disc-shaped only 26,000 light-years away. A quarter of our Milky Way, or the current distance that separates the Earth from the giant black hole at the center of our Galaxy, Sagittarius A*. And the astronomers note that it is already starting to not form too many stars.
Another galaxy some 11 billion light-years away appears in the image — Frame A. As a pencil line. Hence its nickname “The thin one”. And not far from there, the very first red supergiant star that may have been observed more than a billion light-years from our Earth. Thanks to the infrared sensitivity of the James-Webb space telescope.
In the secrets of galaxies and their clusters
The researchers also point to what could turn out to be a new cluster of galaxies forming. A little over a billion years after the Big Bang, it could already be made up of 17 galaxies.
Also spotted on the image of the JWST, the most distant ultra-diffuse galaxies ever observed. Galaxies that appear to exhibit slightly different properties than today.
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