Launched on Christmas 2021, the Webb Space Telescope, which officially began making astronomical observations earlier this month, has had a huge impact on astronomy in two weeks. Webb’s ability to observe galaxies and stars in the early days of the universe was most touted, and it lived up to the hype. It has discovered the most distant known early galaxies. The galaxy known as GLASS-z13 was born 300 million years after the Big Bang. Early galaxies were only one-hundredth the size of the Milky Way, but stars were forming faster than expected, and this was just the beginning. In the earliest published image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, astronomers have discovered 16 distant galaxies through gravitational lensing, the exact ages of which have yet to be determined. The telescope found the spectrum of heavy elements such as oxygen from one of the galaxies. Astronomers call this crazy.
This article is reprinted from: https://www.solidot.org/story?sid=72272
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.