Hashimoto, T;
Laporte, N;
Mawatari, K;
Ellis, R;
Inoue, AK;
Zackrisson, E;
Roberts-Borsani, G;
... Yoshida, N; + view all
(2018)
The onset of star formation 250 million years after the Big Bang.
Nature
, 557
pp. 392-395.
10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z.
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Abstract
A fundamental quest of modern astronomy is to locate the earliest galaxies and study how they influenced the intergalactic medium a few hundred million years after the Big Bang1,2,3. The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline4,5 from redshifts of about 6 to 10, but a key question is the extent of star formation at even earlier times, corresponding to the period when the first galaxies might have emerged. Here we report spectroscopic observations of MACS1149-JD16, a gravitationally lensed galaxy observed when the Universe was less than four per cent of its present age. We detect an emission line of doubly ionized oxygen at a redshift of 9.1096 ± 0.0006, with an uncertainty of one standard deviation. This precisely determined redshift indicates that the red rest-frame optical colour arises from a dominant stellar component that formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of about 15. Our results indicate that it may be possible to detect such early episodes of star formation in similar galaxies with future telescopes.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The onset of star formation 250 million years after the Big Bang |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Cosmology, Galaxies and clusters |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10048931 |
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