(ORDO NEWS) — A team of scientists working at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just released the largest image taken by the telescope to date.
The image is a mosaic of 690 individual frames taken by the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). It covers an area of the sky about eight times larger than the first JWST image from July 12th.
It has a huge number of galaxies, many of which have never been seen before. In addition, the team may have photographed one of the most distant galaxies currently observed.
Scientists from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS) collaboration said the mosaic shows a patch of sky near the handle of Ursa Major.
The images were taken as part of the first observations by the CEERS team, whose goal is to demonstrate that JWST can be effectively used to conduct extragalactic surveys in parallel with other tasks of the telescope.
“This is just the 1st epoch of our observations,” said team member, astrophysicist Rebecca Larson. “Less than half of our program is behind us, and our data has already led to new discoveries and an unexpected array of never-before-seen galaxies.”
Larson also encouraged everyone to open the high resolution images, zoom in and study them. But with the proviso that the highest resolution versions of the images are so huge that they cannot be viewed on small screens, such as telephones.
“The huge number of galaxies that we photographed is amazing!” Larson admits.
In addition, you can see an interacting system of galaxies with a redshift of 1.4 – the CEERS team called it the “Cosmic Kraken” – and two interacting spiral galaxies with a redshift of z=0.7.
Scientists have identified the object, named the “Maisy Galaxy” in honor of the daughter of project leader Stephen Finkelstein.
It may be one of the earliest observable galaxies. While the find is awaiting confirmation, the team has published their research on it.
This galaxy has never seen such a redshift before and may be even older than SMACS 0723, which JWST imaged earlier.
Astronomers believe that JWST sees this galaxy 300 million years after the Big Bang. However, if the Maisie Galaxy is confirmed, it could have formed as little as 290 million years after the Big Bang.
It was during a period called the Age of Reionization when the first stars lit up and hydrogen began to ionize, allowing the first light to shine in the universe.
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