This video, a scientific visualization of the galaxies captured as a part of the CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) Survey, showcases a large undertaking by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. It flies by thousands of galaxies, starting with those nearby and ending with less-developed galaxies in the very distant universe, including one never seen before Webb.
This 3D visualization portrays
about 5,000 galaxies within a small portion of the CEERS (Cosmic Evolution
Early Release Science) Survey, which gathered data from a region known as the
Extended Groth Strip. As the camera flies away from our viewpoint, each second
amounts to traveling 200 million light-years into the data set, and seeing 200
million years further into the past. The appearances of the galaxies change,
reflecting the fact that more distant objects are seen at earlier times in the
universe, when galaxies were less developed. The video ends at Maisie’s Galaxy,
which formed only 390 million years after the big bang, or about 13.4 billion
years ago. Music: Spring Morning, Maarten Schellekens CC BY-NC 4.0
Credits: Visualization: Frank
Summers (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Leah Hustak
(STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Download the video at
Space Telescope Science Institute.
The area highlighted in this
visualization is a small part of the Extended Groth Strip, a region between the Ursa Major
and Boötes constellations originally observed by the Hubble Space Telescope
between 2004 and 2005. While this vast region contains about 100,000 galaxies,
the visualization focuses on approximately 5,000 – with the nearest and more
complex galaxies, shown in the beginning, located within a few billion
light-years of Earth. As the visualization proceeds, showing galaxies farther
away from Earth, we see different stages of the universe’s history and
evolution.
The visualization’s farthest
galaxy, known as Maisie’s Galaxy, is a target of great interest to astronomers.
It formed about 390 million years after the big bang, or about 13.4 billion
years ago. It’s not only one of the first bright, extremely distant galaxies found
by Webb, but it’s also an example of an early galaxy that only Webb could see.
This is because Webb’s instruments can capture the light from these early
galaxies, which has been shifted to infrared wavelengths by the expansion of
the universe.
“This observatory just opens up
this entire period of time for us to study,” said Rebecca Larson of the
Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, one of the survey’s
investigators. “We couldn’t study galaxies like Maisie’s before because we
couldn’t see them. Now, not only are we able to find them in our images, we’re
able to find out what they’re made of and if they differ from the galaxies that
we see close by.”
Steven Finkelstein of the
University of Texas at Austin, principal investigator of the CEERS program,
continued, “This observation exceeded our expectations. The sheer number of
galaxies that we’re finding in the early universe is at the upper end of all
predictions.” The observatory’s ability to conduct surveys like these provides
a demonstration of Webb’s instruments for astronomers to reference for future
observations.
This visualization not only shows
just how far Webb can observe, but also how much it builds off the
accomplishments of Hubble. In many cases, Hubble’s observations, along with
Webb’s data from the CEERS Survey, enabled researchers to determine which
galaxies were truly far away – the early-universe galaxies of interest – and
which were nearby, but so dusty that their visible light was obscured.
With these observations, the next
goal for researchers is to learn about the formation of stars in these early
galaxies.
“We’re used to thinking of galaxies
as smoothly growing,” Finkelstein remarked. “But maybe these stars are forming
like firecrackers. Are these galaxies forming more stars than expected? Are the
stars they’re making more massive than we expect? These data have given us the
information to ask these questions. Now, we need more data to get those
answers.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Source: New 3D Visualization Highlights 5,000 Galaxies Revealed by Webb | NASA
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