In the Dark

I missed the paper containing this impressive picture when it first appeared on the arXiv, the primary source for astrophysics and cosmology research, but fortunately it has now been published on a secondary site, Astrophysical Journal Letters, with an accompanying press release so I can now do a quick post about it.

The article concerned, with lead author Takahiro Morishita of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) et al. describes the detection using JWST of an apparent proto-cluster – seven galaxies in close proximity – at redshift z = 7.88. Here is the abstract:

Although only seven galaxies are identified, this does look like the very early stages of formation of an object that will grow into a giant galaxy cluster by the present epoch. The redshift of this progenitor corresponds to a stage of the Universe just 650 million years or so after the Big Bang, compared with the current age of about 14 billion years. As the abstract says, we would need to know more about other possible constituent galaxies and their motions to be sure, but it looks like a baby destined to grow into a monster…

This entry was posted on April 26, 2023 at 5:13 pm and is filed under The Universe and Stuff with tags Abel 2744, arXiv:2211.09097, Galaxy Cluster, JWST, protocluster. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.