James Webb telescope captures the most distant globular clusters

Astronomers with Canada’s NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) have identified the most distant globular clusters ever detected using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These dense groups of millions of stars may be relics containing the earliest and oldest stars in the universe. This is reported in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In the received image of the first deep field Webb captured the Sparkler galaxy, which is nine billion light-years from Earth. This galaxy got its name because of the compact objects surrounding it in the form of small yellow-red dots, which the researchers call “sparklers.” The researchers speculated that these sparkles represent young clusters in which stars are actively forming, or old globular clusters.

The researchers combined new data from the JWST near-infrared camera (NIRCam) with archived data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The scientists found that the five mystery objects were globular clusters because they lacked the oxygen emission lines that are present in young clusters.