New footage for the first time The James Webb Space Telescope They discovered barred galaxies when the universe was a quarter of its present age.
Bars are elongated features of stars that extend from the centers of galaxies to their outer disks. They accelerate star formation by transporting gas to the central regions.
The University of Texas said in a release that finding barred galaxies would require scientists to refine theories of galaxy evolution, noting that the Hubble Space Telescope had never detected bars at such young ages.
For example, while the galaxy EGS-23205 appears blurry in the Hubble image, the Webb image is much clearer, revealing a spiral galaxy with a clear bar of stars.
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JWST’s ability to map galaxies at higher resolution than Hubble and at longer infrared wavelengths allows it to peer through the dust and reveal the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205 as it appeared about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in a near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disc-shaped blob shrouded in dust and affected by the glow of young stars, while in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), it is a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear star bar.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
The James Webb Space Telescope has a larger mirror, giving it more light-gathering capability and allowing it to see farther with higher resolution.
As he observed Longer infrared wavelengths than Hubblehe can also see better than dust.
“I took one look at this data and said, ‘We’re throwing everything out!'” Shardha Jogee, a professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, described the data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey.
Ball Aerospace lead optical test engineer Dave Chaney inspects six key mirror segments, critical elements of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, 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 dated to about 11 billion years ago – making the two barred galaxies more distant than previously discovered.
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An international team of researchers highlighted these galaxies in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and showed examples of four other galaxies dating back more than 8 billion years.
A montage of JWST images showing a sample of six barred galaxies, two of which represent the highest viewing times quantified and characterized to date. The labels at the top left of each figure indicate the viewing time for each galaxy, ranging from 8.4 to 11 billion years ago (Gyr), when the universe was just 40% to 20% of its current age.
(Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin)
Two undergraduate students played a key role visually reviews hundreds of galaxies and the search for what can be analyzed with a more rigorous mathematical approach.
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Bars also help to form supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, channeling the gaseous part of the path.
The presence of these bars complicates theoretical models, the university said, and the team will test different models in further work.
“This discovery of early bars means that galaxy evolution models now have a new pathway through bars to accelerate the production of new stars at early times,” Jogee said.
