Updated April 26, 2023 at 4:36 p.m
Posted on April 26, 2023 at 4:20 p.m. by Gabriel GADRE
This is another record for the James Webb Space Telescope! He discovered one of the oldest galaxy clusters in the observable universe. A feat narrated by NASA astronomers and which we share here.
© Javier Zaya’s Photography
“It’s incredible !” James Webb photographs a gigantic galaxy cluster
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The Eye of Humanity in Space, better known as James Webb, has once again pulled off a technical feat! It’s been a while. Thanks to our dear space telescope, we have once again succeeded in going beyond the limits of the visible. On the menu : a gigantic cluster of galaxies, almost as old as the universe itself!
A proto-cluster of galaxies
So, thanks to the JWST (another name for the telescope) and the US Space Agency (NASA), we can go back to time immemorial in the history of our cosmic world. A little reminder here: The further we drown in space, the more we see back in time.
Yes, because even light travels at a finite speed (300,000 km per second), which means that over immense distances, such as the universe knows how to create, we see cosmic objects that are already different or gone. It is the story of the dead stars that we still see because their light still reaches us.
So is this titanic cluster of galaxies discovered by James Webb! This is so far from our eyes that we can see it like 13.2 billion years ago, just 650 million years after the Big Bang. But even at its young age, this galaxy cluster was huge.
“A Monster of the Modern Universe”
As evidenced by NASA in a press release published on its website: “Based on the data collected, astronomers have calculated the future evolution of the nascent cluster and found that it will likely increase in size and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster, a monster.” of the modern universe.”
“The prediction that the protocluster will eventually resemble the Coma cluster means it could eventually be among the densest clusters of galaxies known, with thousands of members,” says the space agency. As a reminder, the Coma Cluster, also called, Tuft of hair by Berenice is one of the largest galaxy clusters in the observable universe. It has no less than 1000 galaxies.
James Webb Telescope Reveals Progenitors of Giant Galaxy Cluster in the Early Universe https://t.co/KwK6BLLCxG pic.twitter.com/BbMDIAkkY9
— dr Stefan Gruenwald (@sgruenwald) April 24, 2023
Keep seeing
James Webb’s skills (specifically the “red ship” or near-infrared spectrograph) were critical to this space discovery. Yet even James had to rely on nature to find this cluster of times in the early universe.
This actually had to look at the heap discovered by Pandora’s heap. This allowed him to see even further into space. This is called an effect “gravitational lens” which makes it possible to enlarge the celestial objects located behind.