Superheated star manufacturing facility is found in early universe

The discovery of a superheated star manufacturing facility that types stars 180 instances quicker than our personal Milky Way may assist remedy a long-standing puzzle about how galaxies grew so rapidly within the early universe.

Astronomers uncovered the beforehand unknown, excessive sort of star manufacturing facility by taking the temperature of a distant galaxy glowing intensely in superheated cosmic mud.

The first generations of stars shaped underneath circumstances very completely different from anyplace we will see within the close by universe at this time, which is why the brand new analysis revealed in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society is so fascinating.

Experts are finding out these variations utilizing highly effective telescopes such because the ALMA telescope, which might detect galaxies so distant their mild has taken billions of years to achieve us.

In the examine, a world crew of astronomers led by postdoctoral researcher Tom Bakx, of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, measured the temperature of probably the most distant-known star factories.

The galaxy, often called Y1, is so distant that its mild has taken over 13 billion years to achieve us.

“We’re looking back to a time when the universe was making stars much faster than today,” mentioned Bakx. “Previous observations revealed the presence of dust in this galaxy, making it the furthest away we’ve ever directly detected light from glowing dust.

“That made us suspect that this galaxy is perhaps working a distinct, superheated sort of star manufacturing facility. To be certain, we got down to measure its temperature.”

Stars like our Sun are forged in huge, dense clouds of gas in space. The Orion Nebula and the Carina Nebula are two examples of such star factories. They shine brightly in the night sky, powered by their youngest and most massive stars, which light up clouds of gas and dust in many different colours.

At wavelengths longer than the human eye can see, star factories shine brightly thanks to huge numbers of tiny grains of cosmic dust, heated by starlight.

To be able to probe the galaxy’s temperature, the scientists needed the superior sensitivity of ALMA. One of the world’s largest telescopes, ALMA’s dry, high-altitude location made it possible to image the galaxy in just the right colour, at a wavelength of 0.44 millimetres using its Band 9 instrument.

“At wavelengths like this, the galaxy is lit up by billowing clouds of glowing mud grains. When we noticed how shiny this galaxy shines in comparison with different wavelengths, we instantly knew we have been taking a look at one thing actually particular,” Bakx added.

The detection showed the galaxy’s dust glowing at a temperature of 90 Kelvin – around -180 degrees Celsius.

“The temperature is actually chilly in comparison with family mud on Earth, however it’s a lot hotter than another comparable galaxy we’ve seen,” said co-researcher Yoichi Tamura, an astronomer at Nagoya University in Japan.

“This confirmed that it truly is an excessive star manufacturing facility. Even although it is the primary time we have seen a galaxy like this, we expect that there may very well be many extra on the market. Star factories like Y1 may have been widespread within the early universe.”

Y1 is manufacturing stars at the extreme rate of over 180 solar masses per year, an unsustainable pace that cannot last long on cosmological scales. On average, our galaxy, the Milky Way, creates only about one solar mass per year.

But scientists suspect that brief, hidden bursts of star formation, as seen in Y1, may have been common in the early universe.

“We do not know the way widespread such phases is perhaps within the early universe, so sooner or later we need to search for extra examples of star factories like this. We additionally plan to make use of the high-resolution capabilities of ALMA to take a more in-depth take a look at how this galaxy works,” said Bakx.

His team believes that galaxy Y1 may help solve another cosmic mystery. Earlier studies have shown that galaxies in the early universe appear to have far more dust than their stars could have produced in the short time they have been shining.

Astronomers have been puzzled by this, but Y1’s unusual temperature points to a solution.

“Galaxies within the early universe appear to be too younger for the quantity of mud they comprise. That’s unusual, as a result of they do not have sufficient previous stars, round which most mud grains are created,” said fellow researcher Laura Sommovigo, of the Flatiron Institute and Columbia University in the US.

“But a small quantity of heat mud might be simply as shiny as giant quantities of cool mud, and that is precisely what we’re seeing in Y1. Even although these galaxies are nonetheless younger and do not but comprise a lot heavy parts or mud, what they do have is each sizzling and shiny.”

ENDS

Media contacts

Sam Tonkin

Royal Astronomical Society

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Dr Robert Massey

Royal Astronomical Society

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Science contacts

Tom Bakx

Chalmers University of Technology

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Tel: +46 79 304 5668

Images & video

Superheated star factory

Caption: Glowing deep red from the distant past, the galaxy Y1 shines because of dust grains heated by newly-formed stars (circled in this image from the James Webb Space Telescope).
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri)

Y1 close-up

Caption: Galaxy Y1 and its surroundings as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCAM (blue and green) and by ALMA (red).

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA (JWST), T. Bakx/ALMA (ESO/NRAO/NAOJ)

Further information

The paper ‘A warm ultraluminous infrared galaxy just 600 million years after the big bang’ by Tom Bakx et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1714.

About galaxy Y1

The galaxy is known by its catalogue number, MACS0416_Y1. It lies so far from Earth that its light is stretched out by the expansion of the universe; astronomers refer to its distance as redshift 8.3. It was discovered behind a cluster of galaxies called MACS0416, which itself lies only 4 billion light years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus, the River.

Previous observations by the same team showed that the galaxy holds the record for the furthest away detection of light from cosmic dust.

Notes for editors

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