Webb goes back to the embryo of a monster from the modern universe

These seven galaxies are the oldest spectroscopically confirmed to be part of a developing cluster. – NASA, ESA, CSA, T. MORISHITA (IPAC). IMAGE PROCESS

24 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The Webb Space Telescope has confirmed a protocluster of seven galaxies at a distance astronomers call redshift 7.9, or just 650 million years after the Big Bang.

Based on the collected data, the astronomers calculated the future development of the nascent cluster and found that it will likely grow in size and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster, a monster of the modern universe.

“This is a very special and unique site of accelerated galactic evolution, and Webb gave us the unprecedented ability to measure the velocities of these seven galaxies and confidently confirm that they are bound together in a protocluster,” he said. it’s a statement Takahiro Morishita of IPAC-California Institute of Technology, lead author of the study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Precise measurements captured by Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) were key to confirming the collective distance of galaxies and the high speeds at which they move within a halo of dark matter: about a thousand kilometers per second.

The spectral data allowed astronomers to model and map the future development of the gathering group, up to our time in the modern universe. The prediction that the protocluster will eventually resemble the Coma Cluster means that could eventually be among the densest galaxy collections knownwith thousands of members.

“We can see these distant galaxies as little drops of water in different rivers, and we can see that eventually they will become part of a great mighty river“, said in a statement Benedetta Vulcani of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF), another member of the research team.

Galaxy clusters are the largest concentrations of mass in the known universe, which can drastically warp the very fabric of spacetime. This warping, called gravitational lensing, can have a magnifying effect for objects beyond the cluster, allowing astronomers to peer through the cluster like a giant magnifying glass. The research team was able to use this effect, looking through the Pandora cluster to see the protocluster; even Webb’s powerful instruments need nature’s help to see so far.

It has been difficult to explore how large clusters like Pandora and Coma first came together, due to the expansion of the universe that stretches light beyond visible wavelengths into the infrared, where astronomers lacked high-resolution data before Webb. Webb’s infrared instruments were specifically developed to fill these gaps early in the history of the universe.

The seven galaxies confirmed by Webb were first established as candidates for observation using data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Frontier Fields program. The program dedicated Hubble time to observations using gravitational lensing, to observe very distant galaxies in detail. However, because Hubble cannot detect light beyond the near infrared, it can only see a limited amount of detail. Webb resumed the investigation, focusing on the galaxies explored by Hubble and gathering detailed spectroscopic data in addition to images.