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By NASA
5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals Distorted Galaxy Forming Cosmic Question Mark
The galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154. Full image below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, V. Estrada-Carpenter (Saint Mary’s University). It’s 7 billion years ago, and the universe’s heyday of star formation is beginning to slow. What might our Milky Way galaxy have looked like at that time? Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found clues in the form of a cosmic question mark, the result of a rare alignment across light-years of space.
“We know of only three or four occurrences of similar gravitational lens configurations in the observable universe, which makes this find exciting, as it demonstrates the power of Webb and suggests maybe now we will find more of these,” said astronomer Guillaume Desprez of Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a member of the team presenting the Webb results.
Image A: Lensed Question Mark (NIRCam)
The galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154 is so massive it is warping the fabric of space-time and distorting the appearance of galaxies behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing. This natural phenomenon magnifies distant galaxies and can also make them appear in an image multiple times, as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope saw here. Two distant, interacting galaxies — a face-on spiral and a dusty red galaxy seen from the side — appear multiple times, tracing a familiar shape across the sky. Active star formation, and the face-on galaxy’s remarkably intact spiral shape, indicate that these galaxies’ interaction is just beginning. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, V. Estrada-Carpenter (Saint Mary’s University). While this region has been observed previously with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the dusty red galaxy that forms the intriguing question-mark shape only came into view with Webb. This is a result of the wavelengths of light that Hubble detects getting trapped in cosmic dust, while longer wavelengths of infrared light are able to pass through and be detected by Webb’s instruments.
Astronomers used both telescopes to observe the galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154, which acts like a magnifying glass because the cluster is so massive it warps the fabric of space-time. This allows astronomers to see enhanced detail in much more distant galaxies behind the cluster. However, the same gravitational effects that magnify the galaxies also cause distortion, resulting in galaxies that appear smeared across the sky in arcs and even appear multiple times. These optical illusions in space are called gravitational lensing.
The red galaxy revealed by Webb, along with a spiral galaxy it is interacting with that was previously detected by Hubble, are being magnified and distorted in an unusual way, which requires a particular, rare alignment between the distant galaxies, the lens, and the observer — something astronomers call a hyperbolic umbilic gravitational lens. This accounts for the five images of the galaxy pair seen in Webb’s image, four of which trace the top of the question mark. The dot of the question mark is an unrelated galaxy that happens to be in the right place and space-time, from our perspective.
Image B: Hubble and Webb Side by Side
Image Before/After In addition to producing a case study of the Webb NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) instrument’s ability to detect star formation locations within a galaxy billions of light-years away, the research team also couldn’t resist highlighting the question mark shape. “This is just cool looking. Amazing images like this are why I got into astronomy when I was young,” said astronomer Marcin Sawicki of Saint Mary’s University, one of the lead researchers on the team.
“Knowing when, where, and how star formation occurs within galaxies is crucial to understanding how galaxies have evolved over the history of the universe,” said astronomer Vicente Estrada-Carpenter of Saint Mary’s University, who used both Hubble’s ultraviolet and Webb’s infrared data to show where new stars are forming in the galaxies. The results show that star formation is widespread in both. The spectral data also confirmed that the newfound dusty galaxy is located at the same distance as the face-on spiral galaxy, and they are likely beginning to interact.
“Both galaxies in the Question Mark Pair show active star formation in several compact regions, likely a result of gas from the two galaxies colliding,” said Estrada-Carpenter. “However, neither galaxy’s shape appears too disrupted, so we are probably seeing the beginning of their interaction with each other.”
“These galaxies, seen billions of years ago when star formation was at its peak, are similar to the mass that the Milky Way galaxy would have been at that time. Webb is allowing us to study what the teenage years of our own galaxy would have been like,” said Sawicki.
The Webb images and spectra in this research came from the Canadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS). The research paper is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Image C: Wide Field – Lensed Question Mark (NIRCam)
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu , Leah Ramsey – lramsey@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 04, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxy clusters Goddard Space Flight Center Gravitational Lensing James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Science & Research The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 4 min read
Sols 4277-4279: Getting Ready To Say Goodbye to the King!
Left navigation camera image from Sol 4255, showing “Milestone Peak” on the left, the subject of an RMI in this plan NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 16, 2024
It’s time to move on from our “Kings Canyon” drill site, so today’s plan focused on our usual tidy up routine after a drill campaign. First we need to dump out any material in the drill chambers, in an action called “RAGE” – this sounds aggressive but stands for “Rotation to Agitate Granules for Expulsion,” so it’s more of a gentle turning than an angry shaking. This ensures that the drill chambers won’t spill later and we are ready for the next drill campaign – whenever we find a worthy target! Mastcam will document the entire process, and then image the drill bit that was used, making sure it is still in good condition.
At that point, we are free to use the arm instruments again (no turret movements allowed while there is sample in the drill chamber). So our contact science focuses today on the drill tailings, the pile of ground up rock generated by the drill action. That pile has been sitting there for over two weeks, but luckily it’s not too windy right now and the pile remained more or less intact. MAHLI will image the drill hole and the tailings pile on the first afternoon, APXS will integrate on the tailings on the first night and then MAHLI will image the tailings again on the second day. This post-retract image is just to confirm that APXS did not hit the pile of loose drill fines. As APXS Science Planner today, I worked with RPs to pick out the spot we will focus on and to make sure that we are using the correct sequences to ensure safety of the instrument – but it’s always nice to confirm that we didn’t hit the pile!
ChemCam has a suite of activities, from LIBS activities close to the rover, to “passive” (non destructive) activities and RMI images (which can be relatively near field or long distance). LIBS on the bedrock target “Marck Lake” will be used to compared with the nearby Kings Canyon target and assess homogeneity across the drill block, while the passive observation of “Red Slate Mountain” will examine a large light toned block about 10 metres away from the rover. ChemCam will also acquire a long distance RMI of loose blocks and boulders about 85 metres away, looking towards “Milestone Peak” (shown in the accompanying image).
APXS will acquire an overnight “atmospheric” measurement, looking at levels of argon as part of an ongoing campaign. This is paired with ChemCam’s second passive measurement, this time of the sky. We also have monitoring of dust levels, with Mastcam taus of the atmosphere (which atmospheric scientist Alex Innanen talked about here), and a whole host of Navcam dust devil movies, and suprahorizon and zenith movies (which target different parts of the horizon). All of these … and DAN and REMS activities too – our environmental monitoring team is working hard as usual!
ChemCam has spent the last two weeks or so getting LIBS and passive measurements on “Sam Mack Meadow” – an area of darker toned, sometimes broken up rocks just outside of the current workspace. In fact, ChemCam is getting LIBS on two further targets there in this plan: “Horse Creek Spire” and the somewhat nodular “Kearsarge Pinnacles.” Mastcam will image all of the LIBS targets too. There are some interesting textures here that APXS and MAHLI are keen to sample too, so our next drive is more of a bump to get close enough to allow contact science here too. We will still be able to gaze on the King (Canyon) for another while, so I guess it’s not really goodbye just yet!
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Aug 19, 2024 Related Terms
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Learn Home New TEMPO Cosmic Data Story… Astrophysics Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Stories Science Activation Highlights Citizen Science 3 min read
New TEMPO Cosmic Data Story Makes Air Quality Data Publicly Available
On May 30th, 2024, NASA and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian announced the public release of “high-quality, near real-time air quality data” from NASA’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) mission. The NASA Science Activation program’s Cosmic Data Stories team, led by Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, has since released a new “Data Story” – an interactive, digital showcase of new science imagery, including ideas for exploration and scientific highlights shared in a brief video and narrative text – that provides a quick and easy way for the public to visualize this important, large data set from TEMPO.
TEMPO allows unprecedented monitoring of air quality down to neighborhood scales, with its hourly daytime scans over North America. Air pollutants like NO2, produced, for example, by the burning of fossil fuels, can trigger significant health issues, especially among people with pre-existing illnesses such as asthma. The interactive views in the TEMPO Data Story provide public access to the same authentic data that scientists use and invite the public to explore patterns in their local air quality. For example, how do NO2 emissions vary in our area throughout the day and week? What are possible sources of NO2 in our community? How does our air quality compare with that of other communities with similar population densities, or with nearby urban or rural communities? TEMPO’s hyper-localized data will allow communities to make informed decisions and take action to improve their air quality.
The Cosmic Data Story team is grateful to TEMPO scientists, Xiong Liu and Caroline Nowlan, for providing the team with early access to the data and guidance on NO2 phenomena that learners can explore in the data. The TEMPO Data Story, featured on TEMPO’s webpage for the public, adds Earth science data to the portfolio of Cosmic Data Stories that is already making astrophysics data accessible to the public.
TEMPO Team Atmospheric Physicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Caroline Nowlan, had this to say: “TEMPO produces data that are really useful for scientists, but are also important for the general public and policy makers. We are thrilled that the Cosmic Data Stories team has made a tool that allows everyone to explore TEMPO data and learn about pollution across North America and in their own communities.”
The Cosmic Data Stories project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0002 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
A view from the TEMPO Data Story, shows TEMPO’s NO2 data overlaid on a map of North America. A large plume of NO2, caused by large wildfires, arcs from Northern California all the way to Idaho. Other “hot spots” of NO2 are seen over cities across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Users can view any available date, as well as explore some featured dates and locations that describe phenomena of interest that are visible in the data. Share
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By NASA
This artist’s concept shows how the universe might have looked when it was less than a billion years old, about 7 percent of its current age. Star formation voraciously consumed primordial hydrogen, churning out myriad stars at an unprecedented rate. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will peer back to the universe’s early stages to understand how it transitioned from being opaque to the brilliant starscape we see today.NASA, ESA, and A. Schaller (for STScI) 0:00 / 0:00
Your browser does not support the audio element. Today, enormous stretches of space are crystal clear, but that wasn’t always the case. During its infancy, the universe was filled with a “fog” that made it opaque, cloaking the first stars and galaxies. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will probe the universe’s subsequent transition to the brilliant starscape we see today –– an era known as cosmic dawn.
“Something very fundamental about the nature of the universe changed during this time,” said Michelle Thaller, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Thanks to Roman’s large, sharp infrared view, we may finally figure out what happened during a critical cosmic turning point.”
Lights Out, Lights On
Shortly after its birth, the cosmos was a blistering sea of particles and radiation. As the universe expanded and cooled, positively charged protons were able to capture negatively charged electrons to form neutral atoms (mostly hydrogen, plus some helium). That was great news for the stars and galaxies the atoms would ultimately become, but bad news for light!
It likely took a long time for the gaseous hydrogen and helium to coalesce into stars, which then gravitated together to form the first galaxies. But even when stars began to shine, their light couldn’t travel very far before striking and being absorbed by neutral atoms. This period, known as the cosmic dark ages, lasted from around 380,000 to 200 million years after the big bang.
Then the fog slowly lifted as more and more neutral atoms broke apart over the next several hundred million years: a period called the cosmic dawn.
“We’re very curious about how the process happened,” said Aaron Yung, a Giacconi Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who is helping plan Roman’s early universe observations. “Roman’s large, crisp view of deep space will help us weigh different explanations.”
0:00 / 0:00
Your browser does not support the audio element. Prime Suspects
It could be that early galaxies may be largely to blame for the energetic light that broke up the neutral atoms. The first black holes may have played a role, too. Roman will look far and wide to examine both possible culprits.
“Roman will excel at finding the building blocks of cosmic structures like galaxy clusters that later form,” said Takahiro Morishita, an assistant scientist at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, who has studied cosmic dawn. “It will quickly identify the densest regions, where more ‘fog’ is being cleared, making Roman a key mission to probe early galaxy evolution and the cosmic dawn.”
The earliest stars were likely starkly different from modern ones. When gravity began pulling material together, the universe was very dense. Stars probably grew hundreds or thousands of times more massive than the Sun and emitted lots of high-energy radiation. Gravity huddled up the young stars to form galaxies, and their cumulative blasting may have once again stripped electrons from protons in bubbles of space around them.
“You could call it the party at the beginning of the universe,” Thaller said. “We’ve never seen the birth of the very first stars and galaxies, but it must have been spectacular!”
But these heavyweight stars were short-lived. Scientists think they quickly collapsed, leaving behind black holes –– objects with such extreme gravity that not even light can escape their clutches. Since the young universe was also smaller because it hadn’t been expanding very long, hordes of those black holes could have merged to form even bigger ones –– up to millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass.
Supermassive black holes may have helped clear the hydrogen fog that permeated the early universe. Hot material swirling around black holes at the bright centers of active galaxies, called quasars, prior to falling in can generate extreme temperatures and send off huge, bright jets of intense radiation. The jets can extend for hundreds of thousands of light-years, ripping the electrons from any atom in their path.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is also exploring cosmic dawn, using its narrower but deeper view to study the early universe. By coupling Webb’s observations with Roman’s, scientists will generate a much more complete picture of this era.
So far, Webb is finding more quasars than anticipated given their expected rarity and Webb’s small field of view. Roman’s zoomed-out view will help astronomers understand what’s going on by seeing how common quasars truly are, likely finding tens of thousands compared to the handful Webb may find.
This view from the James Webb Space Telescope contains more than 20,000 galaxies. Researchers analyzed 117 galaxies that all existed approximately 900 million years after the big bang. They focused on 59 galaxies that lie in front of quasar J0100+2802, an active supermassive black hole that acts like a beacon, located at the center of the image above appearing tiny and pink with six prominent diffraction spikes. The team studied both the galaxies themselves and the illuminated gas surrounding them, which was lit up by the quasar’s bright light. The observation sheds light on how early galaxies cleared the “fog” around them, eventually leading to today’s clear and expansive views.NASA, ESA, CSA, Simon Lilly (ETH Zürich), Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University), Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zürich), Christina Eilers (MIT), Rob Simcoe (MIT), Rongmon Bordoloi (NCSU), Ruari Mackenzie (ETH Zürich); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Ruari Macken “With a stronger statistical sample, astronomers will be able to test a wide range of theories inspired by Webb observations,” Yung said.
Peering back into the universe’s first few hundred million years with Roman’s wide-eyed view will also help scientists determine whether a certain type of galaxy (such as more massive ones) played a larger role in clearing the fog.
“It could be that young galaxies kicked off the process, and then quasars finished the job,” Yung said. Seeing the size of the bubbles carved out of the fog will give scientists a major clue. “Galaxies would create huge clusters of bubbles around them, while quasars would create large, spherical ones. We need a big field of view like Roman’s to measure their extent, since in either case they’re likely up to millions of light-years wide –– often larger than Webb’s field of view.”
Roman will work hand-in-hand with Webb to offer clues about how galaxies formed from the primordial gas that once filled the universe, and how their central supermassive black holes influenced galaxy and star formation. The observations will help uncover the cosmic daybreakers that illuminated our universe and ultimately made life on Earth possible.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 ContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Active Galaxies Astrophysics Black Holes Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Origin & Evolution of the Universe Science & Research Stars Supermassive Black Holes The Big Bang The Universe View the full article
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