Cosmic dawn, when stars formed for the first time, occurred 250 million to 350 million years after the beginning of the universe, according to a new s

Astronomers pinpoint when cosmic dawn occurred | University of Cambridge

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2021-06-24 15:30:37

Cosmic dawn, when stars formed for the first time, occurred 250 million to 350 million years after the beginning of the universe, according to a new study led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL).

The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in November 2021, will be sensitive enough to observe the birth of galaxies directly.

The UK-led research team examined six of the most distant galaxies currently known, whose light has taken most of the universe’s lifetime to reach us. They found that the distance of these galaxies away from Earth corresponded to a ‘look back’ time of more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was only 550 million years old.

Analysing images from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the researchers calculated the age of these galaxies as ranging from 200 to 300 million years, allowing an estimate of when their stars first formed.