A large red spot, called CEERS-93316 , was photographed as it existed just 235 million years after the Big Bang, the James Webb image reveals .
Astronomers from the University of Edinburgh have managed to capture the oldest and most distant galaxy in the universe to date thanks to the James Webb .
CEERS -93316, according to the study, existed only 235 million years after the Big Bang and has overtaken GLASS-z13, also imaged by the Space Telescope , which originated 300 million years ago.
James Webb breaks his own records
The scientists, who described their findings in a paper in the preprint database arXiv , found a candidate galaxy with a redshift of 16.7, which equates to just 250 million years after the Big Bang.
The galaxy once emitted visible light, but as a result of its long journey through space and time, it shifted towards the infrared until it became invisible to the human eye.
“We’re using a telescope that was designed to do just this kind of thing, and it’s amazing,” said Callum Donnan, an astrophysics doctoral student at the university’s Institute for Astronomy.
More candidates
Meanwhile, using the same CEERS observations, another team led by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin discovered a galaxy with a redshift of 14.3, placing it 280 million years after the Big Bang, which the researchers have found. called “Maisie’s Galaxy”.
The team also found five other galaxies with a redshift greater than 12, all of which surpass the redshift record set by James Webb ‘s predecessor and now colleague, the Hubble Space Telescope.
However, there is a big caveat in all of this. The first announced candidates from James Webb ‘s observations have not yet undergone full spectroscopic examination.
This process cuts the light coming from a galaxy to reveal the colors that make it up: its spectrum. These will give the clearest view of how light, originally emitted at visible wavelengths, has been stretched into the infrared throughout cosmic history.