The onset of star formation 250 million years after the Big Bang.
Nature
; 557(7705): 392-395, 2018 05.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29769675
ABSTRACT
A fundamental quest of modern astronomy is to locate the earliest galaxies and study how they influenced the intergalactic medium a few hundred million years after the Big Bang1-3. The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline4,5 from redshifts of about 6 to 10, but a key question is the extent of star formation at even earlier times, corresponding to the period when the first galaxies might have emerged. Here we report spectroscopic observations of MACS1149-JD1 6 , a gravitationally lensed galaxy observed when the Universe was less than four per cent of its present age. We detect an emission line of doubly ionized oxygen at a redshift of 9.1096 ± 0.0006, with an uncertainty of one standard deviation. This precisely determined redshift indicates that the red rest-frame optical colour arises from a dominant stellar component that formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of about 15. Our results indicate that it may be possible to detect such early episodes of star formation in similar galaxies with future telescopes.
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Nature
Ano de publicação:
2018
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Japão