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Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking galaxy observed only 290 million years after the Big Bang.

Over the last two years, scientists have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to explore what astronomers refer to as cosmic dawn – the period in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang where the first galaxies were born. These galaxies provide vital insight into the ways in which the gas, stars, and black holes were changing when the Universe was very young. In October 2023 and January 2024, an international team of astronomers used Webb to observe galaxies as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programme. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), scientists obtained a spectrum of a record-breaking galaxy observed only two hundred and ninety million years after the Big Bang. This corresponds to a redshift of about 14, which is a measure of how much a galaxy’s light is stretched by the expansion of the Universe.

This infrared image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was captured as part of the JADES programme. The NIRCam data was used to determine which galaxies to study further with spectroscopic observations. One such galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0 (shown in the pullout), was determined to be at a redshift of 14.32 (+0.08/-0.20), making it the current record-holder for the most distant known galaxy. This corresponds to a time less than 300 million years after the Big Bang.

In the background image, blue represents light at 0.9, 1.15, and 1.5 microns (filters F090W + F115W + F150W), green is 2.0 and 2.77 microns (F200W + F277W), and red is 3.56, 4.1, and 4.44 microns (F356W + F410M + F444W). The pullout image shows light at 0.9 and 1.15 microns (F090W + F115W) as blue, 1.5 and 2.0 microns (F150W + F200W) as green, and 2.77 microns (F277W) as red.

These results were captured as part of spectroscopic observations from the Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) programme 1287, and the accompanying MIRI data as part of GTO programme 1180.

Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

[Image description: A field of thousands of small galaxies of various shapes and colours on the black background of space. A bright, foreground star with diffraction spikes is at lower left. Near the image centre, a tiny white box outlines a region and two diagonal lines lead to a box in the upper right. Within the box is a banana-shaped blob that is blueish-red in one half and distinctly red in the other half. An arrow points to the redder portion and is labeled 'JADES GS z 14 – 0'.]

Release on esawebb.org

Mars’s surface is covered in all manner of scratches and scars. Its many marks include the fingernail scratches of Tantalus Fossae, the colossal canyon system of Valles Marineris, the oddly orderly ridges of Angustus Labyrinthus, and the fascinating features captured in today’s video release from Mars Express: the cat scratches of Nili Fossae.

Nili Fossae comprises parallel trenches hundreds of metres deep and several hundred kilometres long, stretching out along the eastern edge of a massive impact crater named Isidis Planitia.

This new video features observations from Mars Express's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It first flies northwards towards and around these large trenches, showing their fractured, uneven appearance, before turning back to head southwards. It ends by zooming out to a ‘bird’s eye’ view, with the landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover, Jezero Crater, visible in the lower-middle part of the final scene. (You can explore this crater further via ESA’s interactive map.)

The trenches of Nili Fossae are actually features known as ‘graben’, which form when the ground sitting between two parallel faults fractures and falls away. As the graben seem to curve around Isidis Planitia, it’s likely that they formed as Mars’s crust settled following the formation of the crater by an incoming space rock hitting the surface. Similar ruptures – the counterpart to Nili Fossae – are found on the other side of the crater, and named Amenthes Fossae.

Scientists have focused on Nili Fossae in recent years due to the impressive amount and diversity of minerals found in this area, including silicates, carbonates, and clays (many of which were discovered by Mars Express’s OMEGA instrument). These minerals form in the presence of water, indicating that this region was very wet in ancient martian history. Much of the ground here formed over 3.5 billion years ago, when surface water was abundant across Mars. Scientists believe that water flowed not only across the surface here but also beneath it, forming underground hydrothermal flows that were heated by ancient volcanoes.

Because of what it could tell us about Mars’s ancient and water-rich past, Nili Fossae was considered as a possible landing site for NASA’s Curiosity rover, before the rover was ultimately sent to Gale Crater in 2012. Another mission, NASA’s Perseverance rover, was later sent to land in the nearby Jezero Crater, visible at the end of this video.

Mars Express has visited Nili Fossae before, imaging the region’s graben system back in 2014. The mission has orbited the Red Planet since 2003, imaging Mars’s surface, mapping its minerals, studying its tenuous atmosphere, probing beneath its crust, and exploring how various phenomena interact in the martian environment. For more from the orbiter and its HRSC, see ESA's Mars Express releases.

Disclaimer: This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars. See processing notes below.

Processing notes: The video is centred at 23°N, 78°E. It was created using Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single-orbit observations from Mars Express’s HRSC. This mosaic was combined with topography derived from a digital terrain model of Mars to generate a three-dimensional landscape. For every second of the movie, 62.5 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path. The vertical exaggeration is three-fold. Atmospheric effects – clouds and haze – have been added, and start building up at a distance of 50 km.

Click here for the original video created by Freie Universität Berlin, who use Mars Express data to prepare spectacular views of the martian surface. The original version has no voiceover, captions or ESA logo.

Watch the replay of the EarthCARE launch coverage. The video includes streaming of the event at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Germany and footage of liftoff from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, US.
EarthCARE was lofted into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 29 May at 00:20 CEST (28 May, 15:20 local time).

Developed as a cooperation between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite carries a set of four instruments to make a range of different measurements that together will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s climate. With the climate crisis increasingly affecting our planet, EarthCARE is poised to provide data for climate research, to improve the accuracy of climate models and to support numerical weather prediction.

EarthCARE is the most complex of ESA’s trailblazing Earth Explorer research missions – missions that deliver critical information to understand how our world functions and the impact that human activity is having on natural processes.

We are facing a climate emergency. Understanding our planet is more critical than ever before. To protect it, we need to fill in one of the missing pieces of the climate puzzle: how do clouds and aerosols affect Earth’s energy balance? While we know that that they play extremely important roles in regulating our atmosphere’s temperature, we don’t know how their behaviour will change as our climate warms.

This is where EarthCARE comes in. ESA’s Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer will shed new light on how clouds and aerosols affect our climate.

With its suite of four cutting-edge instruments, EarthCARE represents a groundbreaking advancement in satellite technology. It promises to deliver unprecedented data – unravelling the complexities of clouds and aerosols. With this, we can refine our atmospheric models and climate forecasts, giving us the tools to tackle the challenges of a changing climate with greater accuracy and precision.

This video features ESA Director General, Josef Aschbacher and ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli.

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen welcomed home by colleagues at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, after six months on the International Space Station for his Huginn mission.