For the first time, new images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed galaxies with stellar bars at a time when the universe was a quarter of its present age.
Stellar bars are elongated lines of stars that extend from the centers of galaxies to their outer orbits. Gas funnels into the central regions, boosting star formation.
In a release, the University of Texas said the discovery of closed galaxies would require scientists to develop their own theories of galaxy evolution, and noted that the Hubble Space Telescope had never detected bars of such a young age.
For example, while the terrestrial galaxy EGS-23205 appears in the Hubble image, the Webb image is more defined, revealing a spiral galaxy with a bright star bar.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY, JAN. 7, 1610, Galileo
JWST’s ability to image galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it to look through the dust and reveal the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the EGS23205 galaxy as it was 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken with a near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped dust cloud obscured by the glow of young stars, but in the corresponding mid-infrared JWST image (taken this past summer), a beautiful spiral galaxy with a bar it is star-bright.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
The James Webb Space Telescope has a larger mirror, giving it a better ability to see deeper.
Since Hubble already observes infrared waves, it can also see better through dust.
Shardha Jogee, a professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement describing data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS).
Ball Aerospace lead optical test engineer Dave Chaney inspects the six parts of the primary mirror, critical elements on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, before a cryogenic test in the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
(Credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham)
Another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, is also from about 11 billion years ago – making the two barred galaxies exist further back in time than previously discovered.
A green comet left the Earth once when the Neanderthals roamed the Earth.
An international group of researchers highlighted these galaxies and showed examples of four others more than 8 billion years ago in an article in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Montage of JWST images showing a sample of six excluded galaxies, two of which represent the highest observation times of the known quantum and modern known ones. Captions at the top left of each figure show a snapshot in time of each galaxy, from 8.4 to 11 billion years ago (Gyr), when the universe was a mere 40% to 20% of its current age.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
Two undergraduate students played a key role by visually reviewing hundreds of galaxies and searching for those that could be analyzed using a more rigorous mathematical approach.
Click here to get the FOX NEWS APP
Blocks also aid in the formation of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, turning part of the gas pathway.
The existence of these barriers, the university said, challenges theoretical models, and the team will test other models in additional work.
“The discovery of this early age means that galaxy evolution models now have a new path through the bars to the production of new stars in the early stages of maturing,” Jogee said.
#James #Webb #Telescope #reveals #galaxies #locked #billions #years
