Astronomers observe largest ever sample of galaxies up to over 12 billion light years away: Study
An international team of astronomers, utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope, has identified nearly 1,700 galaxy groups in the COSMOS Web area. This extensive catalogue provides unprecedented insights into galaxy formation and the universe's large-scale structure, spanning from twelve billion to one billion years ago. The findings allow scientists to study galaxy evolution within groups across vast cosmic time.
Tired of too many ads?
Remove Ads
Tired of too many ads?
Remove Ads
The largest sample of galaxy groups ever detected has been presented by a team of international astronomers using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in an area of the sky called COSMOS Web.The study marks a major milestone in extragalactic astronomy , providing unprecedented insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the universe.Peering back in time to when the universe was younger than the Earth is now, the images span the period from around twelve billion years ago until one billion years ago.The new catalogue of images, soon to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A), includes nearly 1,700 galaxy groups.The research group's impressive image of a galaxy cluster over six billion light years away is currently showcased as the European Space Agency's (ESA) picture of the month."We're able to actually observe some of the first galaxies formed in the universe," says Ghassem Gozaliasl of Aalto University, and head of the galaxy groups detection team who led the study."We detected 1,678 galaxy groups or proto-clusters -- the largest and deepest sample of galaxy groups ever detected -- with the James Webb Space Telescope. With this sample, we can study the evolution of galaxies in groups over the past 12 billion years of cosmic time," added Gozaliasl.The James Webb Space Telescope began operating in 2022. The largest telescope in space, with its higher resolution and greater sensitivity, has enabled astronomers to see farther and better than ever before.Because light travels at a finite speed, the further away an object is, the further back in time our image of it. By observing very faint, very distant galaxies -- the faintest galaxies in this dataset are one billion times dimmer than the human eye can see -- the team got a glimpse of what galaxies looked like in the early universe, Gozaliasl said.Gozaliasl explains that galaxy groups and clusters are rich environments filled with dark matter , hot gas, and massive central galaxies that often host supermassive black holes."The complex interactions between these components play a crucial role in shaping the life cycles of galaxies and driving the evolution of the groups and clusters themselves. By uncovering a more complete history of these cosmic structures, we can better understand how these processes have influenced the formation and growth of both massive galaxies and the largest structures in the universe," added Gozaliasl.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
15 hours ago
- Mint
Japanese spacecraft crashes into moon in 'hard landing,' says ispace
A private Japanese spacecraft crashed while attempting a touchdown on the Moon on Friday. The Tokyo-based company ispace declared the mission a failure several hours after communication was lost with the lander. This was ispace's second lunar landing attempt. The RESILIENCE lunar lander had begun a landing sequence in an attempt to make a soft touchdown in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's northern hemisphere on June 6, 2025 (JST). Following the landing sequence, the Mission Control Center was unable to establish communications with the RESILIENCE lunar lander. In a statement posted on X, ispace said, "As of 8:00 a.m. [local time] on June 6, 2025, mission controllers have determined that it is unlikely that communication with the lander will be restored and therefore completing Success 9 is not achievable. It has been decided to conclude the mission." 'Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing,' Takeshi Hakamada, Founder and CEO of ispace, said its 'top priority is to swiftly analyse the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause.' Ispace engineers at the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Centre in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, transmitted commands to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 am on June 6, 2025. The RESILIENCE lander then began the descent phase. The lander descended from an altitude of approximately 100 km to approximately 20 km, and then successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration. According to reports, communications ceased less than two minutes before the spacecraft's scheduled landing on the moon with a mini rover. "No data indicating a successful landing was received, even after the scheduled landing time had passed," the company added. A preliminary analysis indicated that the laser system for measuring the altitude did not work as planned, and the lander descended too fast, officials said. "Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface,' the company said in a written statement. A 'hard landing' means Resilience hit the moon's surface faster than planned. It's unlikely it survived in any condition to proceed with its two-week mission, or deploy the small Tenacious rover built by the European Space Agency, reported. The mission had aimed to collect two lunar soil samples and sell them to NASA for $5,000. Though the samples would remain on the Moon, the symbolic transaction is meant to strengthen the US stance that commercial activity -- though not sovereign claims -- should be allowed on celestial bodies. To date, only five nations have achieved soft lunar landings: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan. On board the lander were several high-profile payloads: Tenacious, a Luxembourg-built micro rover; a water electrolyzer to split molecules into hydrogen and oxygen; a food production experiment; and a deep-space radiation probe. The rover also carried "Moonhouse," a model home designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg Two years ago, the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name 'Resilience' for its successor lander. 'This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously," Hakamadawas quote dby PTI as saying. He stressed that the company would press ahead with more lunar missions. Resilience carried a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist's toy-size red house for placement on the moon's dusty surface.
NDTV
a day ago
- NDTV
New Images Capture Mount Etna's Massive Eruption From Space
On June 2, Mount Etna erupted, spewing hot lava down its slopes as a massive ash cloud towered above Sicily. Located on the Italian island of Sicily, Europe's highest and most active volcano sent a colossal plume of ash soaring up to 5 kilometres into the sky during the eruption. Meanwhile, a European Space Agency satellite captured the whole thing from space. Copernicus Sentinel-2C snapped dramatic photos of the eruption just minutes after it began, providing a unique perspective on the volcanic activity. The satellite, launched by the European Commission's Earth observation program in September 2024, captured striking images of Mount Etna's eruption from an altitude of 775 km. The photos reveal a dense ash plume and a pyrocumulus cloud drifting over inland Sicily, as well as active lava flows descending into the Valle del Bove. "The image here clearly depicts the lava flow and huge plume of smoke and ash. A capture from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite also shows the sulphur dioxide emitted in the plume," ESA wrote while sharing the image. See the image here: 🌋 Mount Etna's latest eruption on 2 June was caught by @CopernicusEU Sentinel-2. This image shows the lava distribution from the eruption, using an infrared overlay to highlight lava flowing. — European Space Agency (@esa) June 4, 2025 As per ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite caught the eruption using its wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager that includes 13 spectral bands for imaging Earth's vegetation and landscape. The Copernicus satellites provide critical data to experts, enabling them to monitor volcanic activity, assess hazards, support emergency responses, and track long-term landscape changes. The eruption began at 11:24 am local time on June 2, when increased pressure from hot gases inside Mount Etna led to a partial collapse of one of its craters. This triggered a pyroclastic flow, sending a dense column of ash and smoke kilometres into the atmosphere. Lava flowed in three directions but began to cool down. Pyroclastic flows are highly hazardous, reaching temperatures of up to 1,000°C and travelling at speeds of around 60 miles per hour. #Etna 2025 suite de l'éruption — 🥗Aurelien Pouzin🍯 (@aurelienpouzin) June 2, 2025 Notably, there hadn't been an eruption from Etna of this magnitude since 2014, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Observatory. The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) had noted Mount Etna was experiencing "intense and almost continuous" strombolian explosions. According to the latest statement by INGV, the eruption activity has ceased.
NDTV
2 days ago
- NDTV
After 50 Successful Years, The European Space Agency Has Some Big Challenges Ahead
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Space Agency (Esa). It has launched spectacularly successful missions, but is different to other space agencies which generally represent one country. Esa is funded by 23 member states and also has cooperation agreements with nations such as Canada. Esa operates cutting edge spacecraft designed to monitor the Earth, as well as space telescopes that study the distant cosmos. It has launched robotic spacecraft to other planets and to objects such as comets. It is also involved in human spaceflight – training European astronauts to work on the International Space Station (ISS). These are hugely successful achievements. But the agency now faces challenges as competition heats up among newer space powers such as China and India. The history of Esa can be traced to events immediately after the second world war, when many European scientists moved to either the US or to the Soviet Union. Many of them realised that projects supported only by a single nation could not compete with those supported by the two big geopolitical players at the time. This motivated the physicists Pierre Auger, from France, and Edoardo Amaldi, from Italy, to propose a European organisation that would carry out space research and would be 'purely scientific'. In 1962, two agencies were created. One of these, the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO), would concentrate on developing a rocket. The other, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), would focus on developing robotic spacecraft. Both were joined together in 1975 to form the European Space Agency. The push to build a European rocket would eventually yield the Ariane launcher, which is operated by the French company Arianespace. The first satellite to be launched under the banner of the newly formed European Space Agency was Cos-B. This spacecraft was designed to monitor a high energy form of radiation called gamma rays, being emitted from objects in space. In 1978, Esa cooperated with Nasa and the UK on the International Ultraviolet Explorer mission. This space telescope was designed to observe the cosmos in ultraviolet light, something that cannot be done from Earth. The agency would later collaborate with Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency on one of the most successful space telescopes of all time: Hubble. Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope helped confirm the expansion rate of the universe and showed that black holes are at the cores of almost all galaxies. Hubble's stunning images also changed the way that many people saw the universe. Esa funded one of the original instruments on the space telescope, the Faint Object Camera, and provided the first two solar arrays. The space agency is also a partner on the revolutionary James Webb Telescope, which launched in 2021. Esa contributed two of the telescope's instruments: the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NirSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri). Solar System Missions Esa has also launched pioneering missions to other planets and objects in our solar system. The first of these was the Giotto comet explorer. This robotic spacecraft flew past Halley's comet in 1986 and was successfully woken up in 1992 to study a comet called Grigg-Skejllerup. A second successful cometary mission followed when the Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. Rosetta despatched a lander called Philae to touch down on the comet's surface. Rosetta has been my favourite of all Esa achievements, simply due to the pure audacity of attempting to land on an object whose shape and composition was until then only sparsely known. In order to 'land' on an object with low gravity, Philae was to have deployed harpoons that would attach the lander to the surface. These systems did not work, but the overall mission was a success, leading to high levels of engagement from the public. Besides comets, Esa launched one of the most successful missions to the red planet: Mars Express. The spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 2003 and has played a key role in enhancing understanding of our planetary neighbour. It is expected to continue working until at least 2034. Mars Express also carried the ill-fated British Beagle 2 spacecraft to Mars. This was supposed to land in 2003, but contact was never established with the probe, which is presumed to have been damaged while touching down. In 2005, Esa's Huygens spacecraft landed on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. This was the furthest from Earth that a spacecraft has ever landed. These are all outward facing missions, but Esa has also had major success with projects to study what's going on here on Earth. These include the Envisat satellite, which operated from 2002-2012, and the Sentinel series of spacecraft, which have operated from 2014 to the present. These have helped map agriculture and forests, understand the Earth's climate, track ice, and monitor atmospheric ozone. In addition, the Galileo navigation satellites are providing a high precision alternative to GPS. Esa is also a major player in human spaceflight, having been a partner in the International Space Station project since 1993. It has built sections of the ISS, including the Columbus laboratory, launched in 2008, and the Cupola viewing window, which gives astronauts panoramic views of Earth. The agency's astronauts regularly spend time on the ISS as crew and could even fly to the Moon under Nasa's Artemis programme. Since the 1990s, Esa has frequently collaborated with Nasa – often very successfully. However, this relationship has also faced challenges. In the wake of the financial crisis, for example, Nasa cancelled its participation in several collaborative missions with Esa. Under a proposed Nasa budget this year, the US space agency may again cancel its involvement with the joint Nasa-Esa Mars Sample Return mission. Esa's Future Times have changed in the space industry since Esa's founding 50 years ago. Major countries such as China, India and Japan all have their own space programmes. Esa faces considerable financial pressures to compete with them. Nevertheless, Esa is working on strengthening its space exploration and launch capabilities through the use of a commercial space port in Norway. It has also put together a long-term strategy for 2040. This document highlights important areas where Esa can play a major role, including protecting Earth and its climate, continued missions to explore space and also efforts to boost European growth and competitiveness. All this should strengthen and secure the agency for the future. Through a mixture of developing its own missions and collaborating with other agencies and commercial partners on others, Esa should be a major player in space exploration for decades to come. (Author: , Lecturer in Astronomy, Nottingham Trent University) (Disclosure statement: Daniel Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.)
