The James Webb Telescope (JWST or Webb) has discovered hundreds of ancient galaxies that may be among the oldest members of the universe – a jump from the few galaxies known to exist at the time. 600 million years from now, according to a new study Big Bang these very young galaxies had complex structures and star clusters.

The research is part of an international collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), which collects monthly observations of two small patches of sky, one in the Ursa Major and the other towards the Hearth Cluster. There are more than 700 young galaxies recently discovered in the region, and they reveal what the cosmos looks like in its early days.

“If you take the entire universe and compress it into a two-hour movie, you’ll see the first five minutes of the movie,” said Kevin Heinlein, assistant professor of research at the Steward Observatory in Arizona and lead author of the new study. . said the discovery Monday, June 5, at the American Astronomical Society’s 242nd meeting in Albuquerque and while announcing it online. “These are galaxies that started the process of creating the elements and complexity we see around us today.”

These new discoveries shed light on how the first galaxies and stars formed, creating a rich catalog of elements seen in the universe today.

With the universe between 370 million and 650 million years old, Heinlein and his colleagues analyzed the Webb data and found 717 young galaxies in just five minutes – more than previously estimated – and all of them already include thousands of galaxies. light years, spore complex structures, and star births in multiple clusters.

“Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see were like little specks. Yet these dots represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe,” Heinlein said. expression. “We now see that some of them are actually elongated objects with visible structure.”

Together, the two regions used in this study are referred to as MALLAR-South, short for Deep Investigation of the Origins of the Great ObservatoriesIt has been extensively studied by nearly all major space telescopes, including hubble, Chandra X-Ray Observatory and NASA. now retired Spitzer. Despite this preliminary research, 93% of newly discovered galaxies that Webb observed during JADES had never been seen before. Source