Images reveal the most distant Milky Way ever, just 280 million years after the Big Bang
The latest discovery of the James Webb space telescope is another record-breaker: the farthest galaxy ever, the Big Bang was only 280 million years old.
Titled MOM-Z14 (a joke that prompts “Your mom is so old”), Galaxy was discovered by JWST as part of a Mirage (or Miracle) investigation, a program designed to confirm the identity of the early galaxy. MOM-Z14 is clocked in the redshift of Z = 14.4, meaning its light has expanded through the universe more than 14 times and provides clues to its age. A team of researchers led by Rohan Naidu of MIT published its discovery to preprint server Arxiv and submitted it to the Public Journal of Astrophysics.
The galaxy is not just some dim stain, either – it glows unexpectedly, responding to a growing theme in the discovery of JWST. MOM-Z14 is now joining a strange new series of young galaxies that are much brighter than anyone expected. Jades-GS-Z14-0 found in a separate deep field survey that the astronomer similarly shocked, whose size and brilliance spans 1,600 light-years and contains solar groups in hundreds of millions of stars.
Like Jades-GS-Z14-0, MOM-Z14 does not appear to be powered by supermassed black holes, but by a large crowd of young stars. The brightness of these objects challenges existing models, the speed at which the universe can form stars and galaxies after the Big Bang.
JWST’s glaring infrared gaze is beyond the capabilities of the Hubble, and the Spitzer telescope can go back to a distant time. The leap in capabilities allowed Weber scientists not only to detect early galaxies, but also to distinguish their structure and composition through surprising details.
For example, EGS23205 (the spiral galaxy that can be seen by both Hubble and JWST is forbidden) showed a faint and uncharacteristic appearance in early images of the telescope. But JWST reveals a distinct bar of stars in its center, an elevation of the spiral galaxy and its intricate structure to attract billions of years of development.
Gravitational lenses also help JWST to companion more deeply. If it were an ancient galaxy (nicknamed “Cluster of Pandora”) found near the cluster of Abell 2744, the light from the early galaxies (just 3.5 billion years after the explosion) was curved and could be amplified by the mass in the middle, allowing astronomers to glimpse the original cosmic objects that could otherwise be invisible. These faint light sources are amplified by the huge gravity of the cluster, providing an intimate view of the early universe and are crucial to deep-field astronomy.
The chemical signature of MOM-Z14 adds another wrinkle to the story of the universe: it has abundant nitrogen relative to carbon—a feature that ancient spherical clusters have around the Milky Way, according to the study, that may have once hosted supermass stars. This similarity suggests continuity in a star-forming environment that has been spread over 13 billion years.
It may also reflect a broader trend – the paper notes that compact, high-density contents and poor-density nitrogen. As Universe reports today, the former may define a new class of small red dots and be filled with clues about the formation of the first stars in the universe.
While future observers like the Roman Space Telescope may reveal more of these early cosmic weirdness, JWST has rewrite the galaxy’s timeline. Based on the current speed, the telescope will almost certainly break its own record again soon.
