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JADES-GS-z14-0: A New Farthest Object

Explanation: What if we could see back to the beginning of the universe? We could see galaxies forming. But what did galaxies look like back then? These questions took a step forward recently with the release of the analysis of a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image that included the most distant object yet discovered. Most galaxies formed at about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, but some formed earlier. Pictured in the inset box is JADES-GS-z14-0, a faint smudge of a galaxy that formed only 300 million years after the universe started. In technical terms, this galaxy lies at the record redshift of z=14.32, and so existed when the universe was only one fiftieth of the its present age. Practically all of the objects in the featured photograph are galaxies.

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JADES-GS-z14-0 appears to be photobombed by a galaxy colleague:


JADES-GS-z14-0 (that name sure rolls off the tongue) appears to be partly hidden behind a foreground galaxy. In the nearby universe, non-interacting overlapping galaxies are rare, but they happen:


So what did galaxies look like back in the cosmic dawn? The picture of JADES-GS-z14-0 doesn't give us much of a clue. But according to NASA, primordial galaxies often looked like pool noodles and surfboards.

NASA wrote:

While most distant galaxies look like surfboards and pool noodles, others are shaped like frisbees and volleyballs.

Ann

This is a truly extraordinary image.

While scrolling through the zoomable image I came across these :

A small galaxy seeming to dive into a larger one! A disturbed (shell?) galaxy. Perhaps interacting with the nearly edge-on one seen behind. Edge-on but with tidail-tail like features above and below. Thanks

Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s more, imagine if they all saw, in the same picture, Cleopatra next to a brontosaurus against a background of comets and asteroids crashing everywhere! Such is the incredible feat of deep field images...

Some parts of the name puzzle me. "JADES" is an acronym for "JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey". But what dose "GS" mean? And with a redshift of z = 14.32 why the "0" in "z14-0"? The previous record holder, JADES-GS-z13-0, has a redshift of 13.2, but also a "0" in the name.

I have searched Wikipedia, Scientific American and the JADES homepage without finding an explanation.

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 3:43 pm Some parts of the name puzzle me. "JADES" is an acronym for "JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey". But what dose "GS" mean? And with a redshift of z = 14.32 why the "0" in "z14-0"? The previous record holder, JADES-GS-z13-0, has a redshift of 13.2, but also a "0" in the name.

I have searched Wikipedia, Scientific American and the JADES homepage without finding an explanation.

The nomenclature description given by Vizier is: [RTJ2023] JADES-GS-z1N-0. The interpretation is that "JADES" is deprecated and "RTJ2023" is the preferred catalog name to use, "G" means "galaxy", "S" means southern sky, "z1N" is the redshift, which is always greater than 10, and the name is always terminated with "-0" for reasons not stated.

Christian G. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:38 pm Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s more, imagine if they all saw, in the same picture, Cleopatra next to a brontosaurus against a background of comets and asteroids crashing everywhere! Such is the incredible feat of deep field images...

Nicely stated.

Christian G. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:38 pm Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s more, imagine if they all saw, in the same picture, Cleopatra next to a brontosaurus against a background of comets and asteroids crashing everywhere! Such is the incredible feat of deep field images...

That would be marvelous indeed.

The reason that we can't see Cleopatra co-existing with Brontosaurus is that we would have to actually observe multiple images of Earth from different eras (possibly partly superimposed on one another) in order to see such a miraculous scenario.


Ann

Ann wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 9:12 pm

Christian G. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:38 pm Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s more, imagine if they all saw, in the same picture, Cleopatra next to a brontosaurus against a background of comets and asteroids crashing everywhere! Such is the incredible feat of deep field images...

That would be marvelous indeed.

The reason that we can't see Cleopatra co-existing with Brontosaurus is that we would have to actually observe multiple images of Earth from different eras (possibly partly superimposed on one another) in order to see such a miraculous scenario.

We don't see the Earth like this. Image: The World We Live In (1955 HC) LIFE Geology Planet Earth Fold-Outs Vintage | eBay

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Ann

True. But if the observations (from a far away galaxy in the far future) were subject to gravitational lensing that resulted in multiple images whose photons travelled fortuitously different length paths...

Ann wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 5:06 am

Will you marry me? Don't mind my cat. Image credit: Annie Polley

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Foreground pinkish galaxy apparently partly photobombing background orange one. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA)

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We will see about that.

Perusing around today's APOD is something.
Does anyone know what this is? I assumed a star rather than a galaxy, but are the blue areas anything other than light tricks from Webb's camera?

zendae wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2024 2:54 am 0.jpg

Perusing around today's APOD is something.
Does anyone know what this is? I assumed a star rather than a galaxy, but are the blue areas anything other than light tricks from Webb's camera?

I'd guess a star, but in extremely narrow field images such as this, there usually aren't any stars from what I've seen (Chris will prove me wrong no doubt). Yet, I count over half a dozen objects similar to the one in your extreme close-up. Here are three of them:

zendae wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2024 2:54 am 0.jpg

Perusing around today's APOD is something.
Does anyone know what this is? I assumed a star rather than a galaxy, but are the blue areas anything other than light tricks from Webb's camera?

A bright (by JWST standards) star, almost certainly. And all the structure around it looks to be diffraction artifacts (and the 6-fold symmetry is very strong evidence of this with JWST).