Some are so far away that they appear as they existed in the infant universe, about 13 billion years ago.
To collect the data for the map, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spent 255 hours observing a region of space nicknamed the COSMOS field.
JWST’s observations of the COSMOS field have given us an incredibly detailed view of the universe going back as far as 13.5 billion years.
The raw data from the COSMOS field observations was made publicly available just after it was collected by JWST, but it wasn’t easily accessible.
Raw data from telescopes like JWST needs to be processed by people with the right technical knowledge and access to powerful computers.
The biggest universe map ever made has been revealed by scientists. It encompasses nearly 800,000 galaxies that have been imaged throughout the universe and spans a small portion of space and nearly all cosmic time. Some are so far away that they seem to have existed 13 billion years ago, when the universe was still young.
The Cosmic Evolution Survey collaboration’s scientists unveiled the map Thursday, June 5. It captures an arc of the sky that is 0 to 54 degrees square, or roughly three times the area of the moon as seen from Earth.
The area of space known as the COSMOS field was observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for 255 hours in order to gather the data for the map. Because there are so few stars, gas clouds, or other objects in this area of the sky that obstruct our view of the deep cosmos, scientists have been using telescopes to scan it across as many light wavelengths as they can.
By observing the COSMOS field, JWST has provided us with a very detailed picture of the universe up to 13.5 billion years in the past.
Visible light that originated at the opposite end of the universe and was stretched out due to the expansion of the universe becomes infrared light. These faint, stretched-out signals from the beginning of time that we couldn’t see with other telescopes are the reason JWST was built to be an incredibly sensitive infrared telescope. Our understanding of the universe’s formation is already being altered by it.
“Since the telescope turned on, we’ve been wondering ‘Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model?'” explained Caitlin Casey, co-lead for the COSMOS project and physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The main surprise with JWST is that we see about ten times as many galaxies at these amazing distances as we would have predicted. Supermassive black holes that are invisible with Hubble are also being observed. “,”.
Soon after the COSMOS field observations were gathered by JWST, the raw data was made publicly available, although it was not readily available. People with the necessary technical skills and access to powerful computers are required to process raw data from telescopes such as JWST.
