Galaxy Cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746 in Pictor | James Webb Space Telescope

Galaxy Cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746 in Pictor | James Webb Space Telescope

An international team of astronomers has used the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first discovery of star clusters in an infant galaxy less than 500 million years after the Big Bang.

Young galaxies in the early Universe underwent significant burst phases of star formation, generating substantial amounts of ionizing radiation. However, because of their cosmological distances, direct studies of their stellar content have proven challenging. Using Webb, an international team of astronomers have now detected five young massive star clusters in the Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD1), a strongly-lenzed galaxy emitting light when the Universe was roughly 460 million years old, looking back across 97% of cosmic time.

The Cosmic Gems arc was initially discovered in NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images obtained by the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS) program of the lensing galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746. 

With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at an unprecedented distance. 

Image Description: A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle is a collection of dozens of yellowish galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. Among them are distorted linear features that mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the center of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. A variety of brightly colored, red and blue galaxies with a variety of shapes are scattered across this densely populated image.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration

Release Date: June 24, 2024

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