The most distant galaxy we’ve ever discovered
James Webb Space Telescope's next-gen spectrograph can observe 100 galaxies in one go
The galaxy candidate HD1, in red, as seen in the center of a zoomed-in image. Credit: Harikane et al. (CC0)
One of my aims with this Space Y Newsletter is to begin to cover trending Space news of the week. Space feels inspirational to me even while being in a science news bracket that I generally find little fault with, that neutrality is peaceful and points to human progress.
With the James Webb Space Telescope's next-gen spectrograph - the way we understand our home galaxy and this Universe will change very quickly.
So let’s get into it:
The Measurement of a new galaxy from the early Universe, HD1, have led to it being characterized as the farthest, youngest, most distant galaxy ever seen. This may or may not turn out to be the case.
Known as HD1, it's thought to be at a redshift of 13.27, a time just 330 million years after the Big Bang, and a distance of 33 billion light-years away.
But the properties of the candidate galaxy have not been spectroscopically confirmed. Some astronomy experts remind us that we’ve fooled ourselves before without that key data, and we should be highly skeptical now.
The history of astronomy is a constant collection of firsts. We are in a golden age of Space science. Think about it, it’s a majestic potential discovery.
Researchers have spotted what might be the farthest astronomical object ever found — a galaxy candidate named HD1 that they estimate is 13.5 billion light-years away. That's an astonishing 100 million light-years more distant than the current farthest galaxy, GN-z11.
HD1
HD1 is particularly bright in ultraviolet light, indicating highly energetic activity in the galaxy. As such, scientists originally theorized it might be a starburst galaxy, or one that produces stars at a relatively high rate.
What else might we find with the Near Infrared Spectrograph, one of the four instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope, that are just getting ready to open their eyes to the cosmos.
Each understanding of the Cosmos reframes what we thought we knew, and the possibilities are endless. In the future, Quantum computing simulations might help us understand galaxy, planet and universe formation even better.
Now researchers on HD1 suggest two new possibilities to explain the extreme energy emitted from the galaxy. On the one hand, it might have a supermassive black hole 100 million times as massive as the sun at its center; that would be the oldest black hole that size ever observed. On the other hand, HD1 might be home to some of the universe's very first stars, which astronomers haven't been able to observe to date.
D1's age compared to the farthest galaxy confirmed to date.
To the Ends of the Known Universe
While researchers have not quite made it to the edge of the universe, they did just creep one step further with the discovery of a galaxy up to 13.5 billion light-years away, named HD1.
In a study published recently in The Astrophysical Journal and an accompanying paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, University of Tokyo astronomer Yuichi Harikane and his colleagues outline the methods of discovery and possible implications of HD1’s existence. It’s the most distant cosmic body on record so far.
Meanwhile announced on April 10th, a bizarre event occurred. Hubble spotted the most distant single star ever seen, at a record distance of 28 billion lightyears.
With a fortuitous lineup of a massive cluster of galaxies, astronomers from among other institutes the University of Copenhagen and DTU discovered a single star across most of the entire observable Universe. This is the farthest detection of a single star ever. The star may be up to 500 times more massive than the Sun.
A massive galaxy cluster focuses and magnifies the light from a background galaxy. Credit: Peter Laursen.
A cosmic telescope predicted by Einstein
Among the wonders predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity is the ability of mass to “curve” space itself. As light passes close to massive objects, its path follows the curved space and changes direction. If a massive object happens to lie between us and a distant background source of light, the object may deflect and focus the light toward us as a lens, magnifying the intensity.
Humanity is extending its eye’s reach into the known Universe. Astronomy is pushing the boundaries of what life is, how it came to be and what galaxies and matter are. Some physicists now believe dark matter doesn’t exist, it’s just information that has mass. I find that entirely plausible. Ancient religions said as much.
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