The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a tightly-packed ¡®knot¡¯ involving at least three galaxies which were forming around a quasar around 11.5 billion years ago, roughly two billion years after the Big Bang, reveals a new blogpost by ESA.
JWST¡¯s near-infrared spectrograph not only revealed that the galaxies were orbiting each other at speeds of up to 435 miles per second, but also the fact that this was one of the most dense known areas of early galaxy formation.
According to the lead researcher, Dominika Wylezalek the density was so unusually high that there could even be two ¡®halos¡¯ of dark matter fusing in this zone.
Even the quasar is pretty unusual. Named SDSS J165202.64+172852.3, it is a very rare instance that doesn¡¯t emit as wide a variety of light as normal quasars which are already pretty rare.
Objects like this serve as an active galactic nucleus and are fuelled by the gas tumbling into a supermassive black hole at the centre of their galaxies.?
The imagery is yet another example of how powerful sensors on JWST truly are. Earlier studies with the help of Hubble and Gemini-North telescopes spotted the quasar¡¯s outflows, but weren¡¯t able to show more than one host galaxy.?
Researchers highlight that more study is needed to understand how galaxy clusters such as this take form and are affected by supermassive black holes.
Researchers note that this is just the beginning of quasar discoveries using JWST. The team highlighted that Hubble data hints that there could be more galaxies moving around the quasar.?
This is also the first part of a three-part study using Webb to analyse quasars at multiple points in the universe¡¯s history. They could help shed light on cosmic evolution in the years to come.
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