Astronomers observe the most distant stellar nursery and grave ever seen
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Scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe what are likely the most distant stellar nurseries and stellar graves ever observed.
They combined ALMA and Hubble Space Telescope data to detect these regions of space in a nebula in a galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away, a press statement reveals.
Next, they hope to observe the same region of space with the James Webb Space Telescope in a bid to reveal even more about the ancient nebula.
The most distant stellar nursery ever seen
The team, led by Yoichi Tamura, an astronomer at Nagoya University, made high-resolution observations of MACS0416_Y1, which is located 13.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. They published their findings in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
The team had previously observed radio waves emitted by both oxygen and dust from MACS0416_Y1, both of which are components of interstellar dust.
However, their previous observations lacked the resolution required to see the structure of the nebulae, so they decided to turn to ALMA for follow-up observations.
For 28 hours, the scientists zoomed in on MACS0416_Y1 with ALMA, revealing never-before-seen details of the ancient galaxy.
Their results showed that the dust signal regions and oxygen emission regions are delicately intertwined. Each avoids the other, suggesting the stellar birth process ionizes the surrounding gas.
The team also found an enormous cavity spanning roughly 1,000 light-years in the dustiest regions. They suggest this cavity may be a "superbubble" that forms when many shortlived stars go supernova.
Scientists want James Webb follow-up observations
The observations made by ALMA were incredibly precise, given how far away and how early in the universe the galaxy is located.
The observation "corresponds to capturing the extremely weak light emitted by two fireflies located 3 centimeters apart on the summit of Mount Fuji as seen from Tokyo, and being able to distinguish between those two fireflies," Takuya Hashimoto from the University of Tsukuba explained in the statement.
Next, the team hopes to perform more observations using James Webb's state-of-the-art infrared imagers. By doing so, they hope to shed more light on the earliest stellar nurseries and stellar graves ever observed.
"In the future, more detailed information can be obtained by conducting high-resolution observations of these star clusters themselves, using instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the planned Extremely Large Telescopes," added Hashimoto.
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