James Webb finds the most distant galaxy

An international team of astronomers led by Brant Robertson from the University of California, Santa Cruz (USA) and Emma Curtis Lake from the University of Hertfordshire (UK) has confirmed the discovery of the most distant galaxy ever observed by scientists. The result was only possible thanks to the great observational power of the James Webb Space Telescope.

But you must be wondering: again?! Didn’t we see a lot of headlines about the farthest galaxy shortly after James Webb was released? Yes you are right. But this time the ad is different. For the first time, these are not just candidate galaxies, but galaxies with confirmed distances.

This happens because the first indicator of distance is the color of the galaxy. As light travels through the universe, and that universe expands, the light gets redder and redder. This is the well-known and enhanced effect of general relativity.

These galaxies did indeed appear particularly red in the first space telescope images. Thus, they were excellent candidates for distant objects. However, it is impossible to be sure that it is a really distant galaxy, or perhaps a naturally closer red object.

For scientists to verify an object’s distance, it is necessary to obtain spectroscopy data. Thus, we can use the known signatures of the chemical elements to determine how much “red” the light of this galaxy is, and thus confirm that the light traveled billions of years to get here.

In this case, the researchers used a known signature of hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe. The team confirmed that the signature they were looking for was about 14 times redder than expected, underlining the galaxy’s enormous distance.