The James Webb Space Telescope Traces the History of the Galaxy Just After the Big Bang

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Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte as seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope (left) a better view of the galaxy as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (right).

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to map the history of stars in low-mass dwarf galaxies that resemble the galaxies that filled the early universe. This research may help better understand how the rate of star formation has changed over the past 13 billion years since time began.

Reported SpaceTuesday (13/2/2024), the team, led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick astronomer Kristen McQuinn, zoomed in on the Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte (WLM) galaxy with JWST to get the most accurate picture of this isolated realm in the cosmos.

As a neighbor of the Milky Way, the WLM is at the edge of our local group of galaxies about three million light years away. It actively forms stars, and also hosts ancient stars that are believed to have formed around 13 billion years ago, only about 800 million years after the Big Bang occurred.

Because low-mass galaxies like these are thought to dominate the early universe, they are an excellent proxy for researchers like McQuinn who want to study early star formation rates.

“By looking deeply and seeing clearly, we are able, effectively, to go back in time,” McQuinn said. “You’re basically doing a kind of archaeological dig to find very low mass stars that formed early in the history of the universe.”

JWST’s observational power ultimately allows astronomers to magnify these faint galaxies in a way that has never been possible before.

Low mass galaxies such as WLM are faint and widely distributed in the sky, making up the majority of galaxies in the local group of the Milky Way. However, the WLM has a privileged position within the local dumbbell-shaped cluster, as its presence at the edge of this cluster has kept it isolated and prevented the gravitational influence of other galaxies from damaging its stellar population.

Plus the fact that this system….