GLASS-z12 is a candidate

Lyman-break galaxy Lyman-break galaxies are star-forming galaxies at high redshift that are selected using the differing appearance of the galaxy in several imaging filters due to the position of the Lyman limit. The technique has primarily been used to select gal ...

discovered by the Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) observing program using the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope which conducts infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble ...

in July 2022. It is currently one of the earliest and most distant galaxies ever discovered, dating back to just 350 million years after the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from t ...

, 13.6 billion years ago. GLASS-z12 derives its name from the GLASS survey that discovered it and its estimated

redshift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and simultaneous increase in f ...

of approximately z = . GLASS-z12 was initially announced as ''GLASS-z13'' because it was thought to have a higher redshift of z = 13.1. This redshift value was later revised down to z = 12.4 in October 2022, resulting in the renaming of this galaxy. GLASS-z12 has a light-travel distance ( lookback time) of 13.6 billion years. However, due to the

expansion of the universe The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not exp ...

, its present proper distance is 33.2 billion light-years. It was discovered alongside another galaxy, GLASS-z10, comparable to

GN-z11 GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major. It is one of the farthest known galaxies from Earth ever discovered. The 2015 discovery was published in a 2016 paper headed by Pascal Oesch and Gabriel Brammer (Cosmic Daw ...

, also one of the oldest galaxies discovered.

Spectroscopic Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter ...

observations of GLASS-z12 by the

Atacama Large Millimeter Array The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which observe electromagnetic radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. Th ...

(ALMA) in August 2022 detected an emission line potentially associated with doubly ionized oxygen (O III) at 258.7 GHz, with a marginal significance of 5σ. If real, this would imply a spectroscopic redshift of for GLASS-z12. No signs of dust or other emission features were detected by ALMA, suggesting negligible dust obscuration and a very low dust content of GLASS-z12, if not the early universe as well. NASA-GLASS-z13-Context-JWST-20220722

References

{{2022 in space Galaxies Sculptor (constellation) Dwarf galaxies

See also

References