High-powered telescopes peer back at Cosmic Dawn
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.027543
New Yorker : Thanks to images captured by Japan’s Subaru Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, astronomers are getting a glimpse of some of the earliest star systems, formed more than 13 billion years ago during what has been dubbed the “Cosmic Dawn.” From the cloud of hydrogen and helium gas surrounding what was at first thought to be one enormous distant galaxy, Richard Ellis of Caltech and colleagues have determined they are seeing instead three smaller, very primitive galaxies composed of the first generation of stars. Because the galaxies appear to be in the act of merging, the system could provide insight into cosmic evolution and the formation of our own Milky Way galaxy.
