UCL: Stars Formed Only 250 Million Years After the Big Bang

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UCL: Stars Formed Only 250 Million Years After the Big Bang

Post by bystander » Wed May 16, 2018 8:07 pm

Stars Formed Only 250 Million Years After the Big Bang
University College London | 2018 May 16
Stars in a galaxy 13.28 billion light years away formed only 250 million years after the Big Bang, finds a team of international astronomers led by groups at UCL and Osaka Sangyo University in Japan.

The discovery shows that stars in the galaxy – called MACS1149-JD1 – formed at an unexpectedly early stage in the age of the Universe and the new observations break the team’s own record for detecting the most distant known source of oxygen.

The team confirmed the distance of the galaxy through observations undertaken with the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT); the distance corresponds to looking back to a time when the Universe was only 500 million years old, which is 3.5% of its present age.

Although the presence of galaxies at this epoch is not necessarily surprising, the detection of oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 indicates a more remarkable conclusion. Oxygen is only created in stars and then released into the gas clouds in galaxies when those stars die. The presence of oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 therefore indicates that a previous generation of stars had already formed and died at an even earlier time. ...

The team reconstructed the earlier history of MACS1149-JD1 using infrared data taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. The observed brightness of the galaxy is well explained by a model where the onset of star formation corresponds to a time only 250 million years after the Universe began. ...

ALMA and VLT Find Evidence for Stars Forming Just 250 Million Years After Big Bang
European Southern Observatory Science Release | 2018 May 16

ALMA Finds Most-Distant Oxygen in the Universe
National Radio Astronomy Observatory | 2018 May 16

ALMA Finds Oxygen 13.28 Billion Light-Years Away
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan | 2018 May 16

ALMA Finds Most-Distant Oxygen in the Universe
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) | 2018 May 16

The Onset Of Star Formation 250 Million Years After the Big Bang - Takuya Hashimoto et al
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