Madrid, 19 (European press)
The image is a mosaic of 690 individual frames captured with the Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and covers an area of the sky eight times larger than the first JWST deep-field image released on July 12.
It is full of early galaxies, many of which have not been seen before. In addition, the team may have imaged one of the most distant galaxies observed so far.
The scientists, from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), said the mosaic is a patch of sky near the “tail” of Ursa Major. The images were taken as part of the CEERS team’s first observations, which are working to show that JWST can be used efficiently for extragalactic studies, even while the telescope is making other observations.
“This is just the first phase of our observations,” team member and astrophysicist Rebecca Larson said on Twitter. “We’re less than halfway through our full survey, and our data has already led to new discoveries and an unexpected but unpleasant abundance of galaxies we’ve never seen before.”
In the large mosaic, there are a few notable galaxies shown in the image above. The first is a redshift spiral galaxy at z = 0.16. The resolution of the JWST images reveals a large number of blue star-forming clusters and star clusters.
There is also a system of interacting galaxies at a redshift of 1.4, which the CEERS team has dubbed the “Space Kraken,” as well as two interacting spiral galaxies at a redshift of z = 0.7. The observations also point to what was likely the first supernova detected using JWST images.
Other insets show a fascinating spiral galaxy, which the team says highlights JWST’s ability to resolve small-scale features of even slightly more distant galaxies, as well as a transverse alignment of a tidal-tail galaxy and a cluster of red galaxies.
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