NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) found not one, but two of the oldest and most distant galaxies ever seen, and continues to break the records it had previously set. The farthest galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, It looks exactly as it did about 300 million years after the Big Bang.existing at least 100 million years earlier than the previous record holder.
The discovery means that the light that JWST saw from this primordial galaxy traveled for 13.5 billion years on its way to reach us. JADES-GS-z14-0 is not alone either. It was discovered together with another galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-1almost as far away and which occupies second place in the ranking of the oldest galaxies ever seen by humanity, according to the specialized media Space.com.
The announcement of the discoveries, made in October 2023 and January 2024, are the latest developments in the ongoing investigation of the cosmic dawn that the $10 billion telescope facilitated as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. . JADES aims to provide vital information about the ways in which starsgas and black holes were evolving in primordial galaxies when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was very young.
“These galaxies join a small but growing population of galaxies from the first 500 million years of cosmic history, where we can really investigate the stellar populations and the distinctive patterns of chemical elements within them,” said Francesco D’, member of the team and scientist at the Kavli Institute of Cosmology. Eugenio said in a statement.
However, JADES-GS-z14-0 is not only notable for how distant it is from Earth and how early it existed in the cosmos. With a width of about 1,600 light years in diameter, This “cosmic dawn” galaxy also stands out for how large and bright it is.
