If you ever wanted to know when the first normal-looking galaxy came onto the scene, well, we finally have an answer: at T+ 700 million years, a normal-looking galaxy, cataloged as A1689-zD1, was already on the scene. This system’s light was magnified into our view by the gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. 

This system appears to be forming about thirty stars a year, and the light and wind from those stars are pushing gas out of the system. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers could identify the specific light of oxygen and carbon and follow its flow out of the galaxy and into the surrounding circumgalactic space.

This work was presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting by Hollis Akins.

It is amazing that we can use the gravity from galaxy clusters to magnify light from background systems, but galaxy clusters aren’t exactly perfectly formed systems, and the light we see looks like something viewed in a funhouse mirror.

While the suite of telescopes available to this team isn’t able to directly view distant galaxies like A1689-zD1, it is hoped the JWST will be able to. In just three weeks, we will get the first scientific images from this new and massive infrared telescope. Many of us are trying to guess just what those images will show, and I, for one, am hoping for galaxies at the beginning of the universe.

More Information

An otherwise quiet galaxy in the early universe is spewing star stuff (Science News)

“ALMA reveals extended cool gas and hot ionized outflows in a typical star-forming galaxy at z=7.13,” Hollis Akins et al., to be published in The Astrophysical Journal (preprint)