The Most Distant Known Galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0 | James Webb Space Telescope

The Most Distant Known Galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0 | James Webb Space Telescope

A field of thousands of small galaxies of various shapes and colors on the black background of space. A bright, foreground star with diffraction spikes is at lower left. Near image center, a tiny white box outlines a region and two diagonal lines lead to a box in upper right. Within the box is a banana-shaped blob that is blueish-red in one half and distinctly red in the other half. An arrow points to the redder portion and is labeled "JADES GS z 14 0."

Scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to obtain a spectrum of the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 in order to accurately measure its redshift and therefore determine its age. The redshift can be determined from the location of a critical wavelength known as the Lyman-alpha break. This galaxy dates back to less than 300 million years after the big bang.

Over the last two years, scientists have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to explore what astronomers refer to as Cosmic Dawn—the period in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang where the first galaxies were born. These galaxies provide vital insight into the ways in which the gas, stars, and black holes were changing when the universe was very young. In October 2023 and January 2024, an international team of astronomers used Webb to observe galaxies as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. Using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), they obtained a spectrum of a record-breaking galaxy observed only two hundred and ninety million years after the Big Bang. This corresponds to a redshift of about 14, a measure of how much a galaxy’s light is stretched by the expansion of the universe. 

The NIRCam data was used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout), was determined to be at a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record-holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the Big Bang.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), P. Cargile (CfA), J. Olmsted (STScI). Science: S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), JADES Collaboration

Release Date: May 30, 2024

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