The (upper) arrow points to the farthest galaxy in the universe. (Low) Infrared carbon dioxide lines. When it came out of the galaxy, the signal was ultraviolet light at about 0.2 ሜትm, but it was changed again, more than 10 times to 2.28 ሜትm. Credit © Kashikawawa and others.
Chemical signatures provide distance to a distant galaxy.
A team of astronomers used a cake I telescope to measure the distance to the ancient galaxy. They are not only the oldest galaxy, but also the most distant. The far-sightedness defines the boundaries of the universe itself. The team believes that this study could shed light on cosmology at a time when the universe was only a few hundred million years old.
We all sometimes ask ourselves big questions: “How big is the universe?” Or “How and when were the galaxies created?” Astronomers take these questions seriously, and use sophisticated tools that push the boundaries of technology to test and answer them. Nubanar Kashikawa, a professor of astronomy at the University of Tokyo, is fascinated by galaxies. He especially wanted what we could see to see how and when.
“According to previous studies, the Galaxy G-z11 appears to be the most probable galaxy in the world at 13.4 billion light years or 134 billion kilometers (134 by 30 zeros).” But measuring and verifying such distances is not an easy task. ”
Kashikawa and his team measured the so-called GN-z11 red. This refers to the way in which light is spread, reddened, traveled. Certain chemical signatures, called emissions, print special patterns in distant objects. Astronomers can measure the distance traveled by light and measure the distance between the target galaxy and the distant galaxy.
“We are particularly sensitive to ultraviolet radiation, because we expect to receive red chemical signatures around the electromagnetic field,” Kashikawa said. ” Hubble Space Telescope It has found its signature several times in the GN-z11 tissue. But even Hubble can’t solve the ultraviolet emissions as much as we would like. So we turned to the current Spectrum, a Mosfiyer, equipped with the Cake I Telescope in Hawaii, to measure current emissions. ”
Mosfiyer detailed the emission lines from the GN-z11, which allowed the team to estimate the distance far beyond the previous data. When working with distances on these scales, it is not wise to use even the most familiar parts of a kilometer. Instead, astronomers use the value of the red number indicated by z. Kashikawa and the team are better Accuracy 100 times the value of the galaxy Z. If further observations confirm this, then astronomers can confidently say that the GN-11 is the farthest galaxy ever discovered in the universe.
Reference: “As evidence for the GN-z11 in the bright galaxy in Red 10.957” by Linuwa Jiang, Nobunari Kashiwa, Shu Wang, Gregory Welt, Louis C. Ho, He Ng Kai, Ichichi Agam, Ziaohuy Fan, Kay Ito, Yingming Liang, Daniel Share And Daniel P. Stark, December 14, 2020; Nature astronomy.
Doy: 10.1038 / s41550-020-01275-y
Funding: the China National Science Foundation (11721303, 11890693, 11991052), the Chinese National Key R&D Program (2016YFA0400702, 2016YFA0400703) and the China-Chile Joint Research Fund (1503) administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS South American Astronomical Center, JPS (15H03645).