JWST discovers huge and compact quiescent galaxy

Astronomers have reported the invention of a brand new galaxy utilizing the James Webb Area Telescope (JWST) as a part of the JWST COSMOS-Net survey. The newfound object, designated JWST-ER1 is a large and compact quiescent galaxy. The findings had been detailed in a paper printed September 14 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Huge galaxies that stopped forming stars (often known as huge quiescent galaxies) are believable progenitors of big elliptical galaxies. On condition that these objects shaped stars earlier and assembled their stellar masses extra shortly, they might be key to enhancing our understanding of the method of galaxy evolution.

Now, a crew of astronomers led by Pieter van Dokkum of Yale College stories the detection of a brand new galaxy of this kind, which obtained designation JWST-ER1. The item was recognized with JWST’s Close to Infrared Digicam (NIRCam) as a part of the continued broad and deep survey of as much as 1 million galaxies—often known as COSMOS-Net. One of the vital exceptional options of JWST-ER1 is the so-called Einstein ring—a phenomenon during which the sunshine seems as a hoop resulting from gravitational lensing.

“The galaxy and its ring had been recognized in JWST NIRCam observations within the context of the COSMOS-Net mission, a public wide-area survey utilizing the F115W, F150W, F277W, and F444W filters,” the researchers defined.

NIRCam observations present that JWST-ER1 consists of a compact early-type galaxy (JWST-ER1g) and a whole Einstein ring (JWST-ER1r) with two conspicuous purple concentrations. The diameter of the middle of the ring was measured to be roughly 1.54 arcseconds.

The brand new galaxy was discovered at a redshift of 1.94, has a radius of about 21,500 light years and its mass is estimated to be 650 billion solar masses. The outcomes level to an age of 1.9 billion years and a low star-formation charge at a stage of 4 photo voltaic plenty per 12 months. Subsequently, JWST-ER1 is a large and quiescent galaxy. It is usually fairly compact, identical to different quiescent galaxies at comparable redshifts.

In the case of the ring JWST-ER1r, the astronomers discovered that it’s produced by a background galaxy at a photometric redshift of two.98. It joins a lot of identified Einstein rings, though most of them aren’t full.

The examine additionally discovered that JWST-ER1 is nearly completely spherical and no apparent star-forming areas, tidal tails, or different irregularities have been recognized within the NIRCam imaging.

The authors of the paper suggest additional observations of JWST-ER1 to be able to examine whether or not close by galaxies or buildings alongside the road of sight might contribute to its mass and to additionally examine whether or not JWST-ER1 is the central galaxy of the progenitor of a cluster.

Extra data:
Pieter van Dokkum et al, An enormous compact quiescent galaxy at z=2 with a whole Einstein ring in JWST imaging, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2309.07969

Journal data:
arXiv

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