This graphic represents the discovery of what may be the most distant protocluster ever found, as described in our latest press release. By using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory together with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have netted an important piece in the history of the universe: when galaxy clusters, the largest structures held together by gravity, begin to form.
The main panel contains an infrared image from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a deep infrared imaging project that used more than a month of the telescope’s observing time. The white box outlines X-rays (blue) seen with Chandra.
The newly-discovered protocluster, dubbed JADES-ID1, is located about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, or just about a billion years after the big bang. It has a mass of about 20 trillion suns and two important characteristics of a protocluster: a large number of galaxies held together by gravity (Webb sees at least 66 potential members) and a huge cloud of hot gas (detected by Chandra). So that only X-rays from the protocluster are included, only X-rays inside the white box are shown. The annotated version of the image shows circles where astronomers find some of the individual galaxies in JADES-ID1.
Most models of the universe predict that there likely would not be enough time and a large enough density of galaxies for a protocluster of this size to form at this epoch in the early universe. The previous record holder for a protocluster with X-ray emission is seen much later, about three billion years after the big bang. Therefore, the discovery of JADES-ID1 will force scientists to re-examine their ideas for how galaxy clusters — gigantic collections of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter — first appeared in the universe.
To find JADES-ID1, astronomers combined deep observations from both Chandra and Webb. By design, the JADES field overlaps with the Chandra Deep Field South, the site of the deepest X-ray observation ever conducted. This field is thus one of the few in the entire sky where a discovery such as this could be made. The researchers found five other proto-cluster candidates in the JADES field, but only in JADES-ID1 are the galaxies seen to be embedded in hot gas. Only JADES-ID1 possesses enough mass for an X-ray signal from hot gas to be expected.
A paper describing these results appears in the latest issue of the journal Nature and is available here. The authors of the study are Akos Bogdan and Gerritt Schellenberger (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian) and Qiong Li and Christopher Conselice (University of Manchester in the United Kingdom).
The earlier study led by Li was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
This composite image features what may be the most distant protocluster ever found; a region of space where a large number of young galaxies are being held together by gravity and hot gas. The image is presented twice, once with, and once without, annotations.
The image includes scores of glowing dots and specks of light, in white and golden hues, set against the blackness of space. This layer of the composite visual is from a deep infrared imaging project undertaken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The specks range from relatively large oval galaxies with discernible spiral arms, and glowing balls with gleaming diffraction spikes, to minuscule pinpoints of distant light. Several of those pinpoints have been circled in the annotated image, as they are part of the distant protocluster.
Layered onto the center of this image is a neon blue cloud. This cloud represents hot X-ray gas discovered by Chandra in the deepest X-ray observation ever conducted. In the annotated image, a thin white square surrounds the blue cloud. This represents Chandra’s field of observation. The X-rays from the distant protocluster located within this box are included in the composite image.
The protocluster, dubbed JADES-1, has a mass of about 20 trillion suns. It is located some 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, or just a billion years after the big bang. The discovery of a protocluster of this size, at this epoch in the early universe, will lead scientists to re-examine their ideas for how galaxy clusters first appeared in the universe.
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