The James Webb Telescope has discovered the oldest galaxy ever, 13.4 billion light-years away

In July this year, it was US President Joe Biden who showed up The first photo by James Webb: Now the space telescope is back to talking about To discover the most distant galaxy ever, 13.4 billion light-years from Earth. The one that has been renamed JADES-GS-z13-0 It dates to 350 million years after the Big Bang, and is therefore the “oldest” ever identified. The previous record was that his birth was set at 400 million years after the formation of the universe.

james webb, It was launched into orbit on December 25, 2021 for the purpose of observation Universe even closer to its origin Compared to what the other Hubble Space Telescope has done over the past few months determinedor even older galaxies, including CEERS-93316. However, the distance calculation method using spatial distance measurement standards has not been approved.

photometry

To estimate the galaxy’s age, and thus its distance, An indirect measurement associated with the properties of light is used. Spatial objects are perceived usingwavelengths are more distorted and broadened, in the infrared spectrum, the greater the distance between them. This is why we talk about “red shift” analysis. For an accurate evaluation, one must use Spectroscopy technique that It divides light into its components It takes into account all their wavelengths.

As written by NASAfrom about 250 well-studied galaxies qFour of whom are already estimated to exist before the 400 million mark years since the Big Bang. Two have already been identified by Hubble, the other two by James Webb: they are precisely the latter, ie JADES-GS-z12-0 and JADES-GS-z13-0, the oldest observed to date.