With five bright sources now confirmed, and more to follow, CR7 is now part of a unique «team» of
bright early galaxies, suggesting there are tens to hundreds of thousands of similar sources in the entire visible Universe.
Not exact matches
Some research has been done to deduce the chemical makeup of very
early galaxies, based on observations of very
bright, distant
galaxies, or of very old stars that formed in the
early universe and are still around today, Hewitt said.
The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be the largest space - based infrared telescope in history, will be able to see some of the light radiated from those very
early galaxies; so where HERA sees a bubble, Webb should see a
bright source of light, Hewitt said.
«Let there be light: Super
bright galaxies of the
early Universe.»
Astronomers have shed further light on the evolution of the
early Universewith the discovery of a «team» of super
bright galaxies.
Dr Sobral said: «Stars and black holes in the
earliest,
brightest galaxies must have pumped out so much high energy / ultraviolet light that they quickly broke up hydrogen atoms.
Marijn Franx, a member of the team from the University of Leiden highlights: «The discovery of GN - z11 was a great surprise to us, as our
earlier work had suggested that such
bright galaxies should not exist so
early in the Universe.»
And when quasars [extremely
bright, compact objects at the centers of some
galaxies] were discovered in the
early 1960s, it was obvious that the source of power had to be gravitational because even nuclear power, which powers the stars, is too inefficient.
The distance measurement of GN - z11 provides additional strong evidence that other unusually
bright galaxies found in
earlier Hubble images are really at extraordinary distances, showing that we are closing in on the first
galaxies that formed in the Universe.
Previous research into star formation in the
early universe has typically been biased toward massive
galaxies because they're
brighter.
In
early 2016, the pair tracked stars within one of the
brightest of these
galaxies, named Dragonfly 44, to learn its mass and other characteristics.
Rather than studying
bright stars, the two students used Hubble Space Telescope data from 274 dwarf stars, which were serendipitously observed by the orbiting observatory while it was looking for the most distant
galaxies in the
early Universe.
The most intense bursts of starbirth are thought to have taken place in the
early Universe in massive,
bright galaxies containing lots of cosmic dust.
What the team directly observed was the last wave of Population III stars, suggesting that such stars should be easier to find than previously thought: they reside amongst regular stars, in
brighter galaxies, not just in the
earliest, smallest, and dimmest
galaxies, which are so faint as to be extremely difficult to study.
Maunakea, Hawaii — Astronomers using several of the largest telescopes on Earth and space have discovered the
brightest galaxy yet found in the
early Universe and have strong evidence that examples... Read more»
In addition to giving astronomers a fascinating glimpse of a huge burst of star formation in the
early Universe, the new information about the Cloverleaf helps answer a longstanding question about
bright galaxies of that era.
The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the
early Universe, in massive,
bright galaxies.
«The biggest challenge is that this weak radiation from the
early universe is obscured by the radio emission from our own Milky Way
galaxy, which is about a million times
brighter than the signal itself, so you have to have very carefully calibrated data to see it,» said Hallinan.
By combing through the deep field called the GOODS North Field, scientists have found a surprisingly
bright galaxy and determined that it was formed
early in cosmic history.
At these wavelengths, astronomers can peer at the disks of gas and dust around newborn stars, see into star - forming clouds, and observe
early galaxies that are
bright in submillimetre wavelengths but obscured by dust in optical light.
The
galaxy, EGS - zs8 - 1, was originally identified based on its particular colors in images from Hubble and Spitzer and is one of the
brightest and most massive objects in the
early universe.
Although GRB 000131, like other gamma - ray bursts, appears to have taken place in a remote «
early galaxy» (or «sub-galactic clumps» of stars) that is smaller than today's luminous
galaxies, astronomers found it difficult to detect that extremely dim, sub-galactic clump of stars even with the Hubble Space Telescope, as the observed fading of the afterglow indicated that the maximum brightness of the gamma - ray emission was explosion was at least 10,000 times
brighter than its host
galaxy.
But we haven't fully connected our theories to what we observe, especially with quasars, these incredibly
bright centers of very distant
galaxies that serve as beacons of the
early universe.