Site is Loading, Please wait...

Tag: Cosmology

Earliest Ionised Bubbles

Age and location of spectroscopically-confirmed distant, early galaxies suggesting the presence of early ionised bubbles.

Age and location of spectroscopically-confirmed distant, early galaxies suggesting the presence of early ionised bubbles. Young and low-mass galaxies (on the order of 200–600 Million years old and 108–1010 solar masses) have the highest star formation rates and are typically Lyman-alpha emitters. The presence of numerous Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies in this field (illustrated as light stars), including several with high equivalent widths (>200 Å) and Lyman-alpha escape fractions (>~50 %), provides strong evidence for candidate ionised bubbles along the line of sight (shaded regions – for illustration purposes only). These early observations (primarily of MUV < -19 Hubble Space Telescope-selected sources) highlight the potential of the James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, to create tomographic maps of ionised regions to learn about the re-ionisation process on local scales. The observations displayed are in the CEERS EGS field at redshifts between 7.1–7.8 and reproduced from Chen et al. (2024).

This graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Earliest Stellar Luminosity Distribution

Distribution of the power output across all wavelengths of stars of known bright central regions of galaxies as a function of redshift.

Distribution of the power output across all wavelengths of stars (referred to as bolometric luminosity, Lbol) of known bright central regions of galaxies (referred to as active galactic nuclei, AGN) as a function of redshift (where higher redshifts represent older ages). The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) opens up a much wider discovery space, now including much fainter and older stellar objects than what has ever been probed (adapted from Scholtz et al., 2023). The brown shaded area shows the range of luminosity and ages spanned by studies before JWST. The blue symbols show a compilation of AGN discovered by JWST, with stars showing type 1 (broad line) AGN and diamonds identifying type 2 (narrow line) AGN. 

This graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Stellar Composite Spectrum

A composite spectrum using all publicly available low-resolution multi-object spectra with redshifts above 5.

A composite stellar spectrum (2-D above, 1-D below) using all publicly available low-resolution multi-object spectra with redshifts above 5. The observations make are a plethora of intergalactic medium (IGM), stellar, and interstellar medium (ISM) features visible. Indeed, amongst these are the Lyman break/Balmer break at short wavelengths (where radiation is absorbed by neutral gas), rest-frame ultraviolet emission lines (that probe electron densities, gas-phase abundances, metallicities, and ionisation parameters of the emitting star-forming galaxies and their environments), and optical line emission. Moreover, this plethora of features allows for characterisations of IGM opacity, stellar ages and masses, and gas-phase metallicities, to only name a few. Dashed vertical lines represent the positions of all detected emission (grey) and absorption (black) lines. The individual spectra are all obtained by the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), an instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and wavelength coverage. The plot is adapted from Roberts-Borsani et al. (2024).

This graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Earliest galaxies distribution

Spectroscopically-confirmed early galaxies and the cosmic star formation rate before and after the first observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Spectroscopically-confirmed early galaxies and the cosmic star formation rate before and after the first observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The individual timing of the galaxies since the Big Bang is measured by their redshifts.

a.) The distribution of pre-JWST candidates (dots) and public JWST data sets (squares) over absolute magnitude (MUV) and time, highlighting the power of JWST to detect galaxies beyond a redshift of 6. The latter include compilations (Roberts-Borsani et al. 2024) and single targets (Castellano et al. 2024; Carniani et al. 2024) observed with NIRSpec MSA observations, as well as NIRCam grism (FRESCO and EIGER; Oesch et al., 2023 and Kashino et al., 2023b, respectively).

b.) The cosmic Star-Formation-Rate (SFR) density over the first Billion years (adapted from Figure 17 of Harikane et al., 2024), as seen from HST/WFC3 samples (circles) and JWST/NIRCam estimates (squares). A model of constant star formation (SF) efficiency is plotted as grey line, for comparison. The model and all literature points are derived from Harikane et al., 2024 (and references therein). The literature points are integrated down to an absolute magnitude of MUV = −18 mag. 

This graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Earliest galaxies morphologies

Resolved morphologies of the early galaxies (with redshift > 6) observed with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).


Resolved morphologies of the early galaxies (with redshift > 6) observed with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) (using the Near-InfraRed Camera, NIRCam, instrument unless otherwise specified). Galaxies in the field (top row) show clumpy and dense structures (Kartaltepe et al. 2023). Thanks to gravitational lensing, the light from these compact galaxies is resolved into several stellar clumps down to small sizes on the scale of tens of parsecs (“The Cosmic Grapes”; Fujimoto et al. 2024). In some cases, these clumps show strong emission lines as showcased for M1149-JD1 observed with NIRISS and NIRCam (Bradač et al. 2024), MIRI imaging and integral field spectroscopy (Álvarez-Márquez et al. 2023), and NIRSpec (GA-NIFS collab. in prep.) suggesting that intense episodes of star formation are concentrated within them. Near the critical lines, the galaxy light is stretched into long arcs revealing bright compact bound star clusters, with intrinsic sizes smaller than 10 parsecs such as for the “Cosmic Gems arc”, “Firefly Sparkle”, and “Sunrise arc” (Adamo et al. 2024; Mowla et al. 2024; Vanzella et al. 2023a, respectively) and single stars such as “Earendel” (Welch et al. 2022). These stellar systems dominate the light of their galaxies, suggesting that star cluster might be a dominant star formation mode for young galaxies.

This graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Cosmic Timeline

The cosmic timeline, from the origin of the known Universe in the Big Bang, 13.8 Billion years ago, until present day.

The cosmic timeline, from the origin of the known Universe in the Big Bang, 13.8 Billion years ago, until present day. Shown are major events based on the current standard picture. After the Big Bang, the Universe underwent “Inflation”, a period of accelerated expansion that expanded the Universe by around 60 orders of magnitude. The Universe then kept expanding and cooling until the next major epoch of “Recombination”, when the first hydrogen atoms formed about 400’000 years later. After the subsequent “Dark ages” of the Universe that lasted for a few hundred Million years, the emergence of the earliest galaxies marked the start of the era of “Cosmic dawn”. Within the first galaxies, the first photons were produced and were capable of ionising the neutral hydrogen atoms permeating space. This then started the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR), the most recent major phase transition in the Universe. Isolated galaxies (light dots) produced ionised regions (roundish patches) in the initial stages of reionisation that grew and merged until the Universe was fully re-ionised. 

A graphic by the DELPHI project (ERC 717001) is included in the current illustration. The final graphic was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Light & dark background versions
  • Vector-format version
  • Transparent background version
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

History of the Universe

Schematic illustration of the history and evolution of the universe—from the Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago to present day—based on our current knowledge and the ground-breaking new insights provided by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Schematic illustration of the history and evolution of the universe—from the Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago to present day—based on our current knowledge and the ground-breaking new insights provided by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Graphically represented are the Big Bang, the Cosmic Inflation, the Dark Ages, the first galaxies, stars and black holes, the Hydrogen reionisation, and the JWST amongst present-day style galaxies within an ever expanding playground called universe. 

The illustration was developed during the breakthrough workshop ‘The Chronology of the Very Early Universe According to JWST: The First Billion Years‘ at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, Switzerland.

  • Variable graphical formats
  • Variable content versions
  • Digital and print-ready versions
  • Readable on light & dark backgrounds
  • Colour-vision deficiency friendly
  • Readable in black&white
Download

Faulty or missing link? – Please report them via a reply below!

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%