Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look for the most distant globular clusters, which may contain the first and oldest stars in the universe. The analysis of Webb's First Deep Field image, which shows the earliest galaxies in the universe, was conducted to understand the origins of the cosmos.
The discovery is already providing a detailed look at the earliest stage of star formation, proving the incredible power of JWST. The analysis was part of the study titled "The Sparkler: Evolved High-redshift Globular Cluster Candidates Captured by JWST," which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The first publicly released science-quality image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, revealed on July 11, 2022, is the deepest infrared view of the universe to date.
Sparkler Galaxy: Finding globular Clusters in the Universe
In analyzing Webb's First Deep Field image, SciTech Daily reported that astronomers focused on what they dubbed the Sparkler galaxy, located about nine billion light-years away and got its name from the small yellow-red dots surrounding it. Researchers determined that these sparkles could be young clusters born three billion years after the Big Bang during the peak of star formation.
Globular clusters are ancient collections of stars from when a galaxy was young and may have clues about its earliest years of formation and growth. Astronomers found that five out of 12 of the compact objects they are studying are among the oldest globular clusters ever known.
It is another milestone for JWST as it was able to capture globular clusters from distant galaxies, which was not possible with the Hubble Space Telescope, says post-doctoral researcher Kartheik G. Iyer. With the help of JWST, scientists can observe the sparkles across a range of wavelengths to create models to understand their physical properties.
In the Milky Way alone, there are about 150 globular clusters, but scientists have yet to understand how and when these clumps of stars formed. They only know that it can be extremely old and it is challenging to measure how old they are. It is only now possible to study distant lobular clusters because of the JWST.
The team said that these globular clusters were formed close to the time when stars started forming in the universe, but they are located far from Earth and even from the Milky Way. Observing the Sparkler galaxy will help scientists guess their age and it would be easy to tell the difference in the age of other globular clusters.
JWST's Impact on Astronomy
Astronomers and space enthusiasts eagerly awaited the first images of JWST to be revealed. They were filled with excitement on the night it was revealed, especially because of how quickly the space telescope began its search for important comic objects.
Study co-author Lamiya Mowla told Space.com that the big reveal came from NASA in the evening and the next day, the whole Canadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team were together looking at the image together. There they saw weirdly shaped highly lensed systems that pop star clusters just like any galaxy.
The discovery of distant globular clusters in the First Deep Field image from JWST is an example of how the space telescope could deliver impressive findings and shape the future of astronomy. The new space telescope was designed to see galaxies from hundreds of millions of light-years after the Big Bang and it is sending data that is deeper than scientists anticipated.
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