"Fireworks" In the Early Universe Revealed

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI

 

 

“There are star-forming knots as far down in size as we can see,” said doctoral student Traci Johnson of the University of Michigan, lead author of two of the three papers describing the research.

Without the magnification boost of the gravitational lens, Johnson added, the disk galaxy would appear perfectly smooth and unremarkable to Hubble. This would give astronomers a very different picture of where stars are forming.

This artist’s illustration portrays what the gravitationally lensed galaxy SDSS J1110+6459 might look like up close. A sea of young, blue stars is streaked with dark dust lanes and studded with bright pink patches that mark sites of star formation. The patches’ signature glow comes from ionized hydrogen, like we see in the Orion Nebula in our own galaxy.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI

 

According to new research, these distant star-formation regions are clumpy and span about 200 to 300 light-years. This contradicts earlier theories suggesting that such regions might be much larger, 3,000 light-years or more in size.

While Hubble highlighted new stars within the lensed galaxy, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will uncover older, redder stars that formed even earlier in the galaxy’s history. It will also peer through any obscuring dust within the galaxy.

“With the Webb Telescope, we’ll be able to tell you what happened in this galaxy in the past, and what we missed with Hubble because of dust,” said Rigby.

These findings appear in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and two additional papers published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Contacts and sources:

Christine Pulliam / Ray Villard, 

Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Dr. Jane Rigby, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Traci Johnson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Citation:
Paper I by T. Johnson et al.
Paper III by T. Johnson et al.
Paper II by J. Rigby et al.