Mapping the Early Universe with NASA’s Webb Telescope

Astronomers and engineers have designed telescopes, partially, to be “time travelers.” The farther away an object is, the longer its mild takes to succeed in Earth. Peering again in time is one cause why NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope focuses on accumulating infrared mild: These longer wavelengths, which have been initially emitted by stars and galaxies as ultraviolet mild greater than 13 billion years in the past, have stretched, or redshifted, into infrared mild as they traveled towards us by way of the increasing universe.

Although many different observatories, together with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have beforehand created “deep fields” by gazing small areas of the sky for important chunks of time, the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven L. Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin, will likely be one of many first for Webb. He and his analysis workforce will spend simply over 60 hours pointing the telescope at a slice of the sky often called the Extended Groth Strip, which was noticed as a part of Hubble’s Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey or CANDELS.

“With Webb, we want to do the first reconnaissance for galaxies even closer to the big bang,” Finkelstein mentioned. “It is absolutely not possible to do this research with any other telescope. Webb is able to do remarkable things at wavelengths that have been difficult to observe in the past, on the ground or in space.”

Mark Dickinson of the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Arizona, and one of many CEERS Survey co-investigators, provides a nod to Hubble whereas additionally wanting ahead to Webb’s observations. “Surveys like the Hubble Deep Field have allowed us to map the history of cosmic star formation in galaxies within a half a billion years of the big bang all the way to the present in surprising detail,” he mentioned. “With CEERS, Webb will look even farther to add new data to those surveys.”

What was the early universe like? There are definitely many knowledge factors, however not sufficient to create an exhaustive census of its situations. Plus, researchers’ information and assumptions are up to date often — every time a brand new deep publicity is launched. “Every time we look farther, we find galaxies earlier and earlier than we thought possible,” mentioned CEERS Survey co-investigator Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. “The conditions in the very early universe had to be right for galaxies to form — and they formed and became massive very quickly.”

“The universe was more compact at this time, which means stars and galaxies could have formed at a greater efficiency,” Finkelstein added. “Some models predict we’ll find 50 galaxies at earlier eras more distant than Hubble can reach, but others predict we will only find a few. In both cases, the data will help us constrain galaxy formation in the early universe.”

The CEERS Survey workforce hopes to establish an abundance of distant objects, together with probably the most distant galaxies within the universe, early galaxy mergers and interactions, the primary large or supermassive black holes, and even earlier quasars than beforehand recognized. These potential “firsts” are solely the start of the worth of this analysis: The workforce, which is made up of over 100 researchers from world wide, will go on to categorise many objects within the subject. “These data will help demonstrate what the structure of the universe was like at various periods,” Finkelstein defined.

Perhaps probably the most thrilling ingredient of this analysis is how the workforce will use the information to uncover new findings about an vital interval of the universe’s historical past referred to as the “Era of Reionization.” The huge bang set off a sequence of occasions, resulting in the cosmic microwave background, the darkish ages, the primary stars and galaxies — after which to the Era of Reionization. During this era, the gasoline within the universe remodeled from principally impartial, which means it was opaque to ultraviolet mild, and have become fully ionized, which allowed it to be clear. Ionization means the atoms have been stripped of their electrons — finally resulting in the “clear” situations detected in a lot of the universe right now.

Many questions stay about this distinctive time in our universe. For instance, what was causing changing the gasoline from impartial to ionized? And how lengthy did it take earlier than the universe grew to become considerably much less opaque and far more clear?

“We think this happened when ultraviolet light escaped young, forming galaxies,” Dickinson defined. “There may be other factors. For example, early accreting black holes may also have emitted ultraviolet light that eventually helped transform the gas.”

Where the galaxies seem on the sky presents one other clue. “We’ll examine reionization-era galaxies to see if they are clustered together in the same regions or if they are more isolated,” mentioned Kartaltepe. “We have a lot of ideas about what causes galaxies to grow and become more massive, but we need more comprehensive information about these galaxies to fully understand how they initially grew and evolved.”

The presence of galactic mergers or interactions — or lack thereof — can even assist the workforce hint the situations of the atmosphere throughout the Era of Reionization. “The CEERS Survey will give us hints about how this period proceeded,” Dickinson provides. “We will certainly learn about the galaxies we think are responsible, and also hope to learn about the ionizing radiation that escaped them.”

The workforce has designed the CEERS Survey to supply as a lot complementary knowledge as potential for a lot of targets on this subject of view. They will make use of three of Webb’s devices, in a number of modes, to acquire photos of the Extended Groth Strip, along with spectra. Spectra are invaluable knowledge since they assist researchers establish the colours, temperatures, motions, and much of every goal, and supply a way more in-depth have a look at the chemical make-up of distant objects.

“That’s the difference with Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec,” Dickinson emphasised. “We’ll open the spectrograph’s microshutter slits to individually observe hundreds of galaxies to obtain their spectra for the first time.”

In the months following the preliminary knowledge launch, the CEERS Survey researchers will create and publish new instruments and catalogs any researcher can use to investigate the information, together with lots of galaxies, galaxy shapes, and photometric redshifts. “With the same set of observations, hundreds of researchers can conduct hundreds of science experiments,” Kartaltepe mentioned. “We’re also going to find things we didn’t even think to ask, which is one more reason why the CEERS Survey research will be so rewarding.”

“Our hope is that the CEERS Survey will influence future distant galaxy surveys with Webb,” Finkelstein added. “It will also demonstrate to the community that observing with a variety of instruments and modes are very valid ways to increase Webb’s scientific yield.”

This analysis is being carried out as a part of a Webb Early Release Science (ERS) program. This program gives time to chose tasks early within the telescope’s mission, permitting researchers to shortly learn the way finest to make use of Webb’s capabilities, whereas additionally yielding strong science.

The James Webb Space Telescope would be the world’s premier area science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will remedy mysteries in our photo voltaic system, look past to distant worlds round different stars, and probe the mysterious buildings and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is a world program led by NASA with its companions, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.