Back to Search
Start Over
The onset of star formation 250 million years after the Big Bang.
- Source :
-
Nature [Nature] 2018 May; Vol. 557 (7705), pp. 392-395. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 May 16. - Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- A fundamental quest of modern astronomy is to locate the earliest galaxies and study how they influenced the intergalactic medium a few hundred million years after the Big Bang <superscript>1-3</superscript> . The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline <superscript>4,5</superscript> from redshifts of about 6 to 10, but a key question is the extent of star formation at even earlier times, corresponding to the period when the first galaxies might have emerged. Here we report spectroscopic observations of MACS1149-JD1 <superscript>6</superscript> , a gravitationally lensed galaxy observed when the Universe was less than four per cent of its present age. We detect an emission line of doubly ionized oxygen at a redshift of 9.1096 ± 0.0006, with an uncertainty of one standard deviation. This precisely determined redshift indicates that the red rest-frame optical colour arises from a dominant stellar component that formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of about 15. Our results indicate that it may be possible to detect such early episodes of star formation in similar galaxies with future telescopes.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1476-4687
- Volume :
- 557
- Issue :
- 7705
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Nature
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 29769675
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z