{"id":9046,"date":"2023-12-03T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9046"},"modified":"2023-12-03T10:00:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T15:00:04","slug":"ghostlike-dusty-galaxy-reappears-in-james-webb-space-telescope-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9046","title":{"rendered":"Ghostlike Dusty Galaxy Reappears in James Webb Space Telescope Image"},"content":{"rendered":"
Color composite of galaxy AzTECC71 from multiple color filters in the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: J. McKinney\/M. Franco\/C. Casey\/University of Texas at Austin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It first appeared as a glowing blob from ground-based telescopes and then vanished completely in images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, the ghostly object has reappeared as a faint, yet distinct galaxy in an image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).<\/p>\n

Astronomers with the COSMOS-Web collaboration have identified the object AzTECC71 as a dusty star-forming galaxy. Or, in other words, a galaxy that\u2019s busy forming many new stars but is shrouded in a dusty veil that\u2019s hard to see through \u2014 from nearly 1 billion years after the Big Bang. These galaxies were once thought to be extremely rare in the early universe, but this discovery, plus more than a dozen additional candidates in the first half of COSMOS-Web data that have yet to be described in the scientific literature, suggests they might be three to 10 times as common as expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis thing is a real monster,\u201d said Jed McKinney, a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Texas at Austin. \u201cEven though it looks like a little blob, it\u2019s actually forming hundreds of new stars every year. And the fact that even something that extreme is barely visible in the most sensitive imaging from our newest telescope is so exciting to me. It\u2019s potentially telling us there\u2019s a whole population of galaxies that have been hiding from us.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that conclusion is confirmed, it suggests the early universe was much dustier than previously thought.<\/p>\n

The galaxy AzTECC71 is clearly visible in the reddest color filter of the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (F444W, far right), but not at all in the bluest filters (F115W and 150W, left). Credit: J. McKinney\/M. Franco\/C. Casey\/University of Texas at Austin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The team published its findings in The<\/em> Astrophysical Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The COSMOS-Web project \u2014 the largest initial JWST research initiative, co-led by Caitlin Casey, an associate professor at UT Austin \u2014 aims to map up to 1 million galaxies<\/a> from a part of the sky the size of three full moons. The goal in part is to study the earliest structures of the universe. The team of more than 50 researchers was awarded 250 hours of observing time in JWST\u2019s first year and received a first batch of data in December 2022, with more coming in through January 2024.<\/p>\n

A dusty star-forming galaxy is hard to see in optical light because much of the light from its stars is absorbed by a veil of dust and then re-emitted at redder (or longer) wavelengths. Before JWST, astronomers sometimes referred to them as \u201cHubble-dark galaxies,\u201d in reference to the previously most-sensitive space telescope.<\/p>\n