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Astronomy

Webb captures star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc

By ScientifiCult 24 June 2024

Webb captures star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc

An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big bang.

This image shows two panels. On the right is field of many galaxies on the black background of space, known as the galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746. On the left is a callout image from a portion of this galaxy cluster showing two distinct lensed galaxies. The Cosmic Gems arc is shown with several galaxy clusters. — An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big bang.
Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionising radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lensed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.
The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) programme of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746.
With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration

Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionising radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lensed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.

The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) programme of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746.

“These galaxies are thought to be a prime source of the intense radiation that reionised the early Universe,” shared lead author Angela Adamo of Stockholm University and the Oskar Klein Centre in Sweden. “What is special about the Cosmic Gems arc is that thanks to gravitational lensing we can actually resolve the galaxy down to parsec scales!”

A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle is a collection of dozens of yellowish galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. Among them are distorted linear features, which mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the centre of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. A variety of brightly coloured, red and blue galaxies of various shapes are scattered across the image, making it feel densely populated. — An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big bang.
Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionising radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lensed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.
The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) programme of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746.
With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration

With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance.

“Webb’s incredible sensitivity and angular resolution at near-infrared wavelengths, combined with gravitational lensing provided by the massive foreground galaxy cluster, enabled this discovery,” explained Larry Bradley of the Space Telescope Science Institute and PI of the Webb observing programme that captured these data.”No other telescope could have made this discovery.”

“The surprise and astonishment was incredible when we opened the Webb images for the first time,” added Adamo. “We saw a little chain of bright dots, mirrored from one side to the other — these cosmic gems are star clusters! Without Webb we would not have known we were looking at star clusters in such a young galaxy!”

In our Milky Way we see ancient globular clusters of stars, which are bound by gravity and have survived for billions of years. These are old relics of intense star formation in the early Universe, but it is not well understood where and when these clusters formed. The detection of massive young star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc provides us with an excellent view of the early stages of a process that may go on to form globular clusters. The newly detected clusters in the arc are massive, dense and located in a very small region of their galaxy, but they also contribute the majority of the ultraviolet light coming from their host galaxy. The clusters are significantly denser than nearby star clusters. This discovery will help scientists to better understand how infant galaxies formed their stars and where globular clusters formed.

This image shows a portion of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746. Two distinct lensed galaxies are visible, of which the lower galaxy (known as the Cosmic Gems arc) is shown with several galaxy clusters within. — An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big bang.
Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionising radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lensed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.
The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) programme of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746.
With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration

The team notes that this discovery connects a variety of scientific fields.

“These results provide direct evidence that indicates proto-globular clusters formed in faint galaxies during the reionisation era, which contributes to our understanding of how these galaxies have succeeded in reionising the Universe,” explained Adamo. “This discovery also places important constraints on the formation of globular clusters and their initial properties. For instance, the high stellar densities found in the clusters provide us with the first indication of the processes taking place in their interiors, giving new insights into the possible formation of very massive stars and black hole seeds, which are both important for galaxy evolution.”

In the future, the team hopes to build a sample of galaxies for which similar resolutions can be achieved.

“I am confident there are other systems like this waiting to be uncovered in the early Universe, enabling us to further our understanding of early galaxies,”

said Eros Vanzella from the INAF – Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna (OAS), Italy, one of the main contributors to the work.

In the meantime, the team is preparing for further observations and spectroscopy with Webb.

“We plan to study this galaxy with Webb’s NIRSpec and MIRI instruments in Cycle 3,” added Bradley. “The NIRSpec observations will allow us to confirm the redshift of the galaxy and to study the ultraviolet emission of the star clusters, which will be used to study their physical properties in more detail. The MIRI observations will allow us to study the properties of ionised gas. The spectroscopic observations will also allow us to spatially map the star formation rate.”

These results have been published today in Nature. The data for this result were captured under Webb observing programme #4212 (PI: L. Bradley).

This image shows two panels. On the right is a field of many galaxies on the black background of space, known as the galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746. On the left is a callout image from a portion of this galaxy cluster showing two distinct lensed galaxies. The Cosmic Gems arc is shown with several galaxy clusters. — An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big bang.
Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionising radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lensed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.
The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) programme of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746.
With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration

Bibliographic information:

Angela Adamo, Larry D. Bradley, Eros Vanzella, Adélaïde Claeyssens, Brian Welch4, Jose M Diego, Guillaume Mahler, Masamune Oguri, Keren Sharon, Abdurro’uf, Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao, Xinfeng Xu, Matteo Messa, Augusto E. Lassen, Erik Zackrisson, Gabriel Brammer, Dan Coe, Vasily Kokorev, Massimo Ricotti, Adi Zitrin, Seiji Fujimoto, Akio K. Inoue, Tom Resseguier, Jane R. Rigby, Yolanda Jiménez-Teja, Rogier A. Windhorst, Takuya Hashimoto and Yoichi Tamura, Bound star clusters observed in a lensed galaxy 460 Myr after the Big Bang, Nature.

Press release from ESA Webb.

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Astronomy

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data

By ScientifiCult 13 April 2022

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between star-forming galaxies and the emergence of the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky.

Astronomers have struggled to understand the emergence of supermassive black holes in the early Universe ever since these objects were discovered at distances corresponding to a time only 750 million years after the Big Bang [1]. Rapidly growing black holes in dusty, early star-forming galaxies are predicted by theories and computer simulations but until now they had not been observed. Now, however, astronomers have reported the discovery of an object — which they name GNz7q — that is believed to be the first such rapidly growing black hole to be found in the early Universe. Archival Hubble data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys helped the team study the compact ultraviolet emission from the black hole’s accretion disc and to determine that GNz7q existed just 750 million years after the Big Bang.

“Our analysis suggests that GNz7q is the first example of a rapidly-growing black hole in the dusty core of a starburst galaxy at an epoch close to the earliest super massive black hole known in the Universe,” explains Seiji Fujimoto, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and lead author of the paper describing this discovery. “The object’s properties across the electromagnetic spectrum are in excellent agreement with predictions from theoretical simulations.”

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data: Crop of the GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field. An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky. The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the image of the Hubble GOODS-North field. **Credit:** NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team, S. Fujimoto et al. (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and University of Copenhagen)

Current theories predict that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxies before expelling the surrounding gas and dust and emerging as extremely luminous quasars. Whilst they are extremely rare, examples of both dusty starburst galaxies and luminous quasars have been detected in the early Universe. The team believes that GNz7q could be the “missing link” between these two classes of objects.

“GNz7q provides a direct connection between these two rare populations and provides a new avenue towards understanding the rapid growth of supermassive black holes in the early days of the Universe,” continued Fujimoto. “Our discovery is a precursor of the supermassive black holes we observe at later epochs.”

Whilst other interpretations of the team’s data cannot be completely ruled out, the observed properties of GNz7q are in strong agreement with theoretical predictions. GNz7q’s host galaxy is forming stars at the rate of 1600 solar masses of stars per year [2] and GNz7q itself appears bright at ultraviolet wavelengths but very faint at X-ray wavelengths. The team have interpreted this — along with the host galaxy’s brightness at infrared wavelengths — to suggest that GNz7q is harbors a rapidly growing black hole still obscured by the dusty core of its accretion disc at the center of the star-forming host galaxy.

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor Detected in Archival Hubble Data: GNz7q in the Hubble GOODS-North field. An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. This object is the first of its kind to be discovered so early in the Universe’s history, and had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky. The object, which is referred to as GNz7q, is shown here in the centre of the cutout from the Hubble GOODS-North field. **Credit:** NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz; Yale University), R. Bouwens and I. Labbé (Leiden University), and the Science Team, S. Fujimoto et al. (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and University of Copenhagen)

As well as GNz7q’s importance to the understanding of the origins of supermassive black holes, this discovery is noteworthy for its location in the Hubble GOODS North field, one of the most highly scrutinised areas of the night sky [3].

“GNz7q is a unique discovery that was found just at the centre of a famous, well-studied sky field — showing that big discoveries can often be hidden just in front of you,” commented Gabriel Brammer, another astronomer from the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and a member of the team behind this result. “It’s unlikely that discovering GNz7q within the relatively small GOODS-N survey area was just ‘dumb luck’ rather the prevalence of such sources may in fact be significantly higher than previously thought.”

Finding GNz7q hiding in plain sight was only possible thanks to the uniquely detailed, multi-wavelength datasets available for GOODS-North. Without this richness of data GNz7q would have been easy to overlook, as it lacks the distinguishing features usually used to identify quasars in the early Universe. The team now hopes to systematically search for similar objects using dedicated high-resolution surveys and to take advantage of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s spectroscopic instruments to study objects such as GNz7q in unprecedented detail.

“Fully characterising these objects and probing their evolution and underlying physics in much greater detail will become possible with the James Webb Space Telescope.” concluded Fujimoto. “Once in regular operation, Webb will have the power to decisively determine how common these rapidly growing black holes truly are.”

Notes

[1] Whilst light travels imperceptibly quickly in day-to-day life, the vast distances in astronomy mean that as astronomers look at increasingly distant objects, they are also looking backwards in time. For example, light from the Sun takes around 8.3 minutes to reach Earth, meaning that we view the Sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago. The most distant objects are the furthest back in time, meaning that astronomers studying very distant galaxies are able to study the earliest periods of the Universe.

[2] This does not mean that 1600 Sun-like stars are produced each year in GNz7q’s host galaxy, but rather that a variety of stars are formed each year with a total mass 1600 times that of the Sun.

[3] GOODS — the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey — is an astronomical survey that combines multi-wavelength observations from some of the most capable telescopes ever built, including Hubble, ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space telescopes, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, and powerful ground-based telescopes.

Supermassive Black Hole Precursor: more information

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

These results have been published in Nature.

The international team of astronomers in this study consists of S. Fujimoto (Cosmic Dawn Center [DAWN] and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), G. B. Brammer (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), D. Watson (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), G. E. Magdis (DAWN, DTU-Space at the Technical University of Denmark, and Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark), V. Kokorev (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), T. R. Greve (DAWN and DTU-Space, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark), S. Toft (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), F. Walter ( DAWN, Denmark, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA), R. Valiante (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Rome, Italy), M. Ginolfi (European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany), R. Schneider (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Rome, Italy and Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy), F. Valentino (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), L. Colina (DAWN, Copenhagen, Denmark and Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA), Madrid, Spain), M. Vestergaard (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, USA), R. Marques-Chaves (Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Switzerland), J. P. U. Fynbo (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), M. Krips (IRAM, Domaine Universitaire, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France), C. L. Steinhardt (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), I. Cortzen (IRAM, Domaine Universitaire, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France), F. Rizzo (DAWN and Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), and P. A. Oesch (DAWN, Copenhagen, Denmark and Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Switzerland).

Press release from ESA/Hubble Information Centre

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