There are billions of galaxies in the universe. These galaxies harbour a multitude of planets, however, there is Only One Earth. Currently, the Earth is facing phenomena

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Toronto: An international team of scientists has released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated.To image an expansive patch of sky, the researchers led by those at the University of Toronto employed a new technique with Hubble known as Drift And SHift (DASH). DASH creates an image that is eight times larger than Hubble's standard field of view by capturing multiple shots that are then stitched together into one master mosaic, similar to taking a panoramic picture on a smartphone.DASH also takes images faster than the typical technique, snapping eight pictures per Hubble's orbit instead of one picture, achieving in 250 hours what would previously have taken 2,000 hours, explained the team in the paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The high-resolution survey named 3D-DASH will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission."Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has led a renaissance in the study of how&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sentinelassam.com/science-and-technology/scientists-reveal-44-million-galaxies-in-new-map-580567" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(255, 100, 0);">galaxies&nbsp;</a>have changed in the last 10-billion years of the universe," said Lamiya Mowla, from the University of Toronto. "The 3D-DASH programme extends Hubble's legacy in wide-area imaging so we can begin to unravel the mysteries of the galaxies beyond our own."For the first time, 3D-DASH provides researchers with a complete near-infrared survey of the entire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sentinelassam.com/international/new-dark-energy-may-explain-why-universe-is-expanding-555700" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(255, 100, 0);">COSMOS&nbsp;</a>field, one of the richest data fields for extragalactic studies beyond the Milky Way.3D-DASH covers a total area almost six times the size of the moon in the sky as seen from Earth. This record is likely to remain unbroken by Hubble's successor JWST, which is instead built for sensitive, close-up images to capture fine detail of a small area. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.—IANS

An international team of scientists has released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated.

Hubble spots largest near-infrared image to find universe's rarest galaxies

Washington: An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them known as 'intra-group light' to characterise the stars that dwell there.
Lead author of the study published in MNRAS, Dr Cristina Martinez-Lombilla from the School of Physics at UNSW Science, said "We know almost nothing about intra-group light.
"The brightest parts of the intra-group light are ~50 times fainter than the darkest night sky on Earth. It is extremely hard to detect, even with the largest telescopes on Earth -- or in space."
Using their sensitive technique, which eliminates light from all objects except that from the intra-group light, the researchers not only detected the intra-group light but were able to study and tell the story of the stars that populate it.
"We analysed the properties of the intra-group stars -- those stray stars between the galaxy groups. We looked at the age and abundance of the elements that composed them and then we compared those features with the stars still belonging to galaxy groups," Dr Martinez-Lombilla said.
"We found that the intra-group light is younger and less metal-rich than the surrounding galaxies."
Not only were the orphan stars in the intra-group light 'anachronistic' but they appeared to be of a different origin to their closest neighbours. The researchers found the character of the intra-group stars appeared similar to the nebulous 'tail' of a further away galaxy.
The combination of these clues allowed the researchers to rebuild the history -- the story -- of the intra-group light and how its stars came to be gathered in their own stellar orphanage.
"We think these individual stars were at some points stripped from their home galaxies and now they float freely, following the gravity of the group," said Dr Martinez-Lombilla. "The stripping, called tidal stripping, is caused by the passage of massive satellite galaxies -- similar to the Milky Way -- that pull stars in their wake."
This is the first time the intra-group light of these galaxies has been observed.
"Unveiling the quantity and origin of the intra-group light provides a fossil record of all the interactions a group of galaxies has undergone and provides a holistic view of the system's interaction history," Dr Martinez-Lombilla said.
"Also, these events occurred a long time ago. The galaxies [we're looking at] are so far away, that we're observing them as they were 2.5 billion years ago. That is how long it takes for their light to reach us."
By observing events from a long time ago, in galaxies so far away, the researchers are contributing vital datapoints to the slow-burning evolution of cosmic events.
The researchers pioneered a unique technique to achieve this penetrating view.
"We have developed a tailored image treatment procedure that allows us to analyse the faintest structures in the Universe," said Dr Martinez-Lombilla.
"It follows the standard steps for the study of faint structures in astronomical images -- which implies 2D modelling and the removal of all light except that coming from the intra-group light. This includes all the bright stars in the images, the galaxies obscuring the intra-group light and a subtraction of the continuum emission from the sky.
"What makes our technique different is that it is fully Python-based so it is very modular and easily applicable to different sets of data from different telescopes rather than being just useful for these images.
"The most important outcome is that when studying very faint structures around galaxies, every step in the process counts and every undesirable light should be accounted for and removed. Otherwise, your measurements will be wrong.
The techniques presented in this study are a pilot, encouraging future analyses of intra-group light, Dr Martinez-Lombilla said.
"Our main long-term goal is to extend these results to a large sample of group of galaxies. Then we can look at statistics and find out the typical properties regarding the formation and evolution of the intra-group light and these extremely common systems of groups of galaxies.
"This is key work for preparing the next generation of deep all-sky surveys such as those to be performed with the Euclid space telescope and the LSST with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory." —ANI

 An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them known as 'intra-group light' to characterise the stars that dwell there.

Astronomers Observe Intra-Group Light, An Elusive Glow Between Distant Galaxies

Washington: An international team of researchers including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has studied the relationship between galaxy size and luminosity of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe taken by the brand-new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), less than a billion years after the Big Bang, reports a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The result is part of the Grim Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) Early-Release Science Program, led by University of California, Los Angeles, Professor Tommaso Treu. It is aimed at studying the early universe when the first stars/galaxies ignited, which ionized the neutral gas in the universe at the time and allowed light to shine through. This is called the epoch of reionization.
However, details of reionization have remained unknown because telescopes until today have not been capable of observing galaxies in this period of the universe's history in detail. Finding out more about the epoch of reionization would help researchers understand how stars and galaxies have evolved to create today's universe as we see it. One study, led by Kavli IPMU JSPS Fellow Lilan Yang, and including Project Researcher Xuheng Ding, used multiband NIRCAM imaging data from the GLASS-JWST program to measure galaxy size and luminosity to figure out the morphology and the size-luminosity relation from rest-frame optical to UV.
"It's the first time that we can study the galaxy's properties in rest-frame optical at redshift larger than 7 with JWST, and the size-luminosity is important for determining the shape of luminosity function which indicates the primary sources responsible for the cosmic reionization, i.e., numerous faint galaxies or relatively less bright galaxies.
"The original wavelength of light will shift to longer wavelength when it travels from the early universe to us. Thus, the rest-frame wavelength is used to clarify their intrinsic wavelength, rather than observed wavelength.
Previously, with Hubble Space Telescope, we know the properties of galaxies only in rest-frame UV band. Now, with JWST, we can measure longer wavelength than UV," said first author Yang. The researchers found the first rest-frame optical size-luminosity relation of galaxies at redshift larger than 7, or roughly 800 million years after the Big Bang, allowing them to study the size as function of wavelength. They found the median size at the reference luminosity is roughly 450-600 parsecs and decreased slightly from rest-frame optical to UV. But was this expected?
"The answer is we don't know what's to expect. Previous simulation studies give a range of predictions," said Yang.
The team also found the slope of the size-luminosity relationship was somewhat steeper in the shortest wavelength band when allowing the slope to vary. "That would suggest higher surface brightness density at shorter wavelength, hence less observational incompleteness correction when estimating luminosity function, but the result is not conclusive. We don't want to over-interpret here," said Yang. —ANI

An international team of researchers including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has studied the relationship between galaxy size and luminosity of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe taken by the brand-new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), less than a billion years after the Big Bang, reports a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Researchers Measure Size-Luminosity Relation Of Galaxies Less Than A Billion Years After Big Bang

<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Washington: The most sensitive telescope now searching for radio signals from cosmic dawn, an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang when stars ignited, has doubled its sensitivity, a new paper reports. While not yet detecting this radiation, the redshifted 21-centimeter line they have put new limits on the elemental composition of galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization. Early galaxies seem to be low in metals, fitting the most popular theory of cosmic evolution.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">In a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) team reports that it has doubled the sensitivity of the array, which was already the most sensitive radio telescope in the world dedicated to exploring this unique period in the history of the universe.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">While they have yet to actually detect radio emissions from the end of the cosmic dark ages, their results do provide clues to the composition of stars and galaxies in the early universe. In particular, their data suggest that early galaxies contained very few elements besides hydrogen and helium, unlike our galaxies today.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">When the radio dishes are fully online and calibrated, ideally this fall, the team hopes to construct a 3D map of the bubbles of ionized and neutral hydrogen as they evolved from about 200 million years ago to around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The map could tell us how early stars and galaxies differed from those we see around us today, and how the universe as a whole looked in its adolescence.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"This is moving toward a potentially revolutionary technique in cosmology. Once you can get down to the sensitivity you need, there's so much information in the data," said Joshua Dillon, a research scientist in the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Astronomy and lead author of the paper. "A 3D map of most of the luminous matter in the universe is the goal for the next 50 years or more."
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Other telescopes also are peering into the early universe. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has now imaged a galaxy that existed about 325 million years after the birth of the universe in the Big Bang. But the JWST can see only the brightest of the galaxies that formed during the Epoch of Reionization, not the smaller but far more numerous dwarf galaxies whose stars heated the intergalactic medium and ionized most of the hydrogen gas.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">HERA seeks to detect radiation from the neutral hydrogen that filled the space between those early stars and galaxies and, in particular, determine when that hydrogen stopped emitting or absorbing radio waves because it became ionized. The fact that the HERA team has not yet detected these bubbles of ionized hydrogen within the cold hydrogen of the cosmic dark age rules out some theories of how stars evolved in the early universe.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Specifically, the data show that the earliest stars, which may have formed around 200 million years after the Big Bang, contained few other elements than hydrogen and helium. This is different from the composition of today's stars, which have a variety of so-called metals, the astronomical term for elements, ranging from lithium to uranium, that are heavier than helium. The finding is consistent with the current model for how stars and stellar explosions produced most of the other elements.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"Early galaxies have to have been significantly different than the galaxies that we observe today in order for us not to have seen a signal," said Aaron Parsons, principal investigator for HERA and a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy. "In particular, their X-ray characteristics have to have changed. Otherwise, we would have detected the signal we're looking for."
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">The atomic composition of stars in the early universe determined how long it took to heat the intergalactic medium once stars began to form. Key to this is the high-energy radiation, primarily X-rays, produced by binary stars where one of them has collapsed to a black hole or neutron star and is gradually eating its companion. With few heavy elements, a lot of the companion's mass is blown away instead of falling onto the black hole, meaning fewer X-rays and less heating of the surrounding region.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">The new data fit the most popular theories of how stars and galaxies first formed after the Big Bang, but not others. Preliminary results from the first analysis of HERA data, reported a year ago, hinted that those alternatives -- specifically, cold reionization -- were unlikely.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"Our results require that even before reionization and by as late as 450 million years after the Big Bang, the gas between galaxies must have been heated by X-rays. These likely came from binary systems where one star is losing mass to a companion black hole," Dillon said. "Our results show that if that's the case, those stars must have been very low 'metallicity,' that is, very few elements other than hydrogen and helium in comparison to our sun, which makes sense because we're talking about a period in time in the universe before most of the other elements were formed." —ANI

The most sensitive telescope now searching for radio signals from cosmic dawn, an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang when stars ignited, has doubled its sensitivity, a new paper reports. 

Researchers Explain How Were Galaxies Much Different In The Early Universe

San Francisco: Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have revealed the first look at star formation, gas, and dust in nearby galaxies with unprecedented resolution at infrared wavelengths.
According to NASA, the data has enabled an initial collection of 21 research papers which provide new insight into how some of the smallest-scale processes in our universe -- the beginnings of star formation -- impact the evolution of the largest objects in our cosmos: galaxies.
The Webb observations are led by Janice Lee, Gemini Observatory chief scientist at the US-based National Science Foundation's NOIRLab and affiliate astronomer at the US-based University of Arizona.
"The clarity with which we are seeing the fine structure certainly caught us by surprise," said team member David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) images show the presence of a network of highly structured features within these galaxies, including glowing cavities of dust and massive cavernous bubbles of gas that line the spiral arms.
"We are directly seeing how the energy from the formation of young stars affects the gas around them, and it's just remarkable," said team member Erik Rosolowsky of the University of Alberta, Canada.
The American Space Agency further mentioned that this web of features appears to be built from individual and overlapping shells and bubbles where young stars are releasing energy in some regions of the nearby galaxies observed.
"Areas which are completely dark in Hubble imaging light up in exquisite detail in these new infrared images, allowing us to study how the dust in the interstellar medium has absorbed the light from forming stars and emitted it back out in the infrared, illuminating an intricate network of gas and dust," said team member Karin Sandstrom of the University of California, San Diego. —IANS

Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have revealed the first look at star formation, gas, and dust in nearby galaxies with unprecedented resolution at infrared wavelengths.

NASA's Webb Telescope Reveals Network Of Gas, Dust In Nearby Galaxies

Pennsylvania (US): What scientists previously believed about the genesis of galaxies in the cosmos is being challenged by the discovery of six huge galaxies in the early universe.
"These objects are way more massive? than anyone expected," said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modelled light from these galaxies, adding, "We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we've discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe."
Using the first dataset released from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the international team of scientists discovered objects as mature as the Milky Way when the universe was only 3% of its current age, about 500-700 million years after the Big Bang.
The telescope is equipped with infrared-sensing instruments capable of detecting light that was emitted by the most ancient stars and galaxies. Essentially, the telescope allows scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it, Leja explained.
"This is our first glimpse back this far, so it's important that we keep an open mind about what we are seeing," Leja said, adding, "While the data indicates they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that a few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes. Regardless, the amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars at this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought. Even if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change."
In a paper published in 'Nature,' the researchers show evidence that the six galaxies are far more massive than anyone expected and call into question what scientists previously understood about galaxy formation at the very beginning of the universe.
"The revelation that massive galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends what many of us had thought was settled science," said Leja, adding, "We've been informally calling these objects 'universe breakers' -- and they have been living up to their name so far."
Leja explained that the galaxies the team discovered are so massive that they are in tension with 99 per cent of models for cosmology. Accounting for such a high amount of mass would require either altering the models for cosmology or revising the scientific understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe -- that galaxies started as small clouds of stars and dust that gradually grew larger over time. Either scenario requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of how the universe came to be, he added.
"We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find," Leja said, adding, "It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question."
On July 12, NASA released the first full-colour images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The largest infrared telescope in space, Webb was designed to see the genesis of the cosmos, its high resolution allowing it to view objects too old, distant or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.
"When we got the data, everyone just started diving in and these massive things popped out really fast," Leja said, adding, "We started doing the modelling and tried to figure out what they were because they were so big and bright. My first thought was we had made a mistake and we would just find it and move on with our lives. But we have yet to find that mistake, despite a lot of trying." Leja explained that one way to confirm the team's finding and alleviate any remaining concerns would be to take a spectrum image of the massive galaxies. That would provide the team data on the true distances, and also the gasses and other elements that made up the galaxies.
The team could then use the data to model a clearer picture of what the galaxies looked like, and how massive they truly were. "A spectrum will immediately tell us whether or not these things are real," Leja said. "It will show us how big they are, how far away they are. What's funny is we have all these things we hope to learn from James Webb and this was nowhere near the top of the list. We've found something we never thought to ask the universe -- and it happened way faster than I thought, but here we are," Leja added. —ANI

What scientists previously believed about the genesis of galaxies in the cosmos is being challenged by the discovery of six huge galaxies in the early universe.

Discovery Of Massive Early Galaxies Defies Prior Understanding Of Universe

Beijing: An international team of scientists has proved that gas recycling is the key factor in the formation of massive galaxies in the early universe and this discovery came after they observed a nebula located 11 billion light-years away, Xinhua News Agency reported. After years of study, the team has detected the detailed process of circumgalactic gas entering this massive galaxy group and has captured a three-dimensional view of its gas recycling, Tsinghua University said at a press conference. According to the university, previous studies had not fully understood the process of how gas flows into galaxies and how this flowing gas drives star formation. Therefore, the team of astronomers from Tsinghua University and their counterparts abroad used the 10-metre Keck II telescope and targeted a massive nebula, referred to as MAMMOTH-1, at an epoch corresponding to 11 billion years ago, to obtain the first glimpse of how such galaxies accrete their gas. They successfully detected line emission in hydrogen, helium and carbon extending for 300,000 light years around this galaxy, said the research article published in the journal Science on Friday. In further analysis, they found the galaxy is surrounded by gas rich in heavy elements, which was ejected from the centre of the galaxy. The cooled gas then flows back into the galaxy under its own gravity and the interactions with nearby satellite galaxies, said Cai Zheng from Tsinghua University. “Our observations give a first hint that the recycled inflows of gas might be a ubiquitous supply mechanism for the formation of stars and massive galaxies in the early universe,” added Cai, who is also the corresponding author of the paper. —ANI

An international team of scientists has proved that gas recycling is the key factor in the formation of massive galaxies

Scientists Reveal How Massive Galaxies Form In Early Universe

Washington: The James Webb Telescope has discovered that the early universe had more than 700 galaxies, a finding not known before. Scientists led an investigation into galaxies that existed millions of years after the big bang. This was a crucial time known as the Epoch of Reionization. For hundreds of millions of years after the big bang, the universe was filled with a gaseous fog that made it opaque to energetic light. By one billion years after the big bang, the fog had cleared and the universe became transparent, a process known as reionization. Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in Tucson and his team used Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument and identified more than 700 candidate galaxies that existed when the universe was between 370 million and 650 million years old. The sheer number of these galaxies was far beyond predictions from observations made before Webb's launch. The observatory's exquisite resolution and sensitivity are allowing astronomers to get a better view of these distant galaxies than ever before. "Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see just looked like little smudges. And yet those smudges represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe," said Hainline. "Now, we can see that some of them are actually extended objects with visible structure. We can see groupings of stars being born only a few hundred million years after the beginning of time." The study is part of an international collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), which gathered observations from two tiny patches in the sky: One in the Ursa Minor constellation and another in the direction of the Fornax cluster. These new findings shed light on how the first galaxies and stars formed, creating the rich catalogue of elements observed in the universe today. However, the researchers stated that 93 per cent of the newfound galaxies had never been seen before. "We're finding star formation in the early universe is much more complicated than we thought," Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona in Tucson, co-lead of the JADES programme. The findings were reported at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque in New Mexico. —IANS

The James Webb Telescope has discovered that the early universe had more than 700 galaxies, a finding not known before

Webb Telescope Finds Over 700 Galaxies Of Early Universe

New York: An international team of researchers has discovered the largest-ever giant and extremely faint stream of stars running between galaxies. The observations were made with University of California-Los Angeles astronomer Michael Rich's relatively small 70-centimetre telescope in the US and using the 4.2-metre William Herschel telescope at La Palma, Spain. After image processing, they saw an extremely faint stream more than 10 times the length of our Milky Way. Named the Giant Coma Stream, it appeared to float in the middle of the cluster environment, not associated with any galaxy in particular, said the researchers in the paper published in the journal Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics. "This giant stream crossed our path by coincidence," said lead researcher Javier Roman, associated with the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of La Laguna in Spain. "We were studying halos of stars located around large galaxies." The discovery of the Giant Coma Stream is remarkable because it is a rather fragile structure amid a hostile environment of mutually attracting and repelling galaxies. "Meanwhile, we have been able to simulate such huge flows in the computer. We therefore expect to find more of them. For example, if we search with the future 39-metre ELT and when Euclid starts producing data," said co-author Reynier Peletier from University of Groningen. With large future telescopes, the researchers not only hope to discover new giant streams, they also want to zoom in on the Giant Coma Stream itself. "We would love to observe individual stars in and near the stream and learn more about dark matter," Peletier said. The Coma Cluster is one of the best-studied clusters of galaxies. It contains thousands of galaxies at a distance of about 300 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the northern constellation Coma Berenices. In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky showed that the galaxies in the cluster move too fast if you only take the amount of visible matter into account. He figured out that there must be dark matter that keeps things together. The exact nature of dark matter is still unknown. —IANS

An international team of researchers has discovered the largest-ever giant and extremely faint stream of stars running between galaxies

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FRI Celebrates World Environment Day on June 5

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