Zooming in on JADES-GS-z14-0, the most distant galaxy known yet

This video zooms into the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, the most distant galaxy confirmed to date. The light of this galaxy took 13.4 billion years to reach us. We’re seeing this galaxy when the Universe was less than 300 million years old, about 2% of its current age.

Thanks to Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope operated by ESO and its international partners, astronomers have now uncovered the presence of a surprising element after examining its light spectrum: oxygen. The presence of heavy elements like oxygen suggests that the formation of these early galaxies happened much faster than we thought, which must have had multiple generations of stars being born and dying.

The various images shown here, blended together to create this zoom, come from different telescopes at different times, ending with close-up of the galaxy as seen by ALMA, together with the spectrum recovered by two independent research teams.

For more details, check the related press release: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2507/

Credit:
ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Digitized Sky Survey 2/DESI/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Carniani et al./S. Schouws et al/JWST: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA). Music: Astral Electronic

This video is available for download in various formats on: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso2507c/