James Webb Telescope tracks dwarf galaxy bearing ancient stars and infant stars

In the quest to know more about the formation of stars, scientists landed upon a 13 billion-year-old galaxy with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This galaxy is a close neighbour to our Milky Way galaxy and its research could help better understand how star formation rates have changed since then.

The mapping of the Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte (WLM) was done by a team led by Kristen McQuinn, who is an astronomer at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. The team obtained the most precise image of the WLM galaxy with the help of the James Webb Telescope, which helped in the research of star formations.

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The best part about the mapping of this new galaxy is that it is actively forming stars and also hosts a set of ancient stars, which will help researcherscompare the formation of stars between the two timelines.

WLM is a low-mass dwarf galaxy, which is believed to have dominated the early universe. This makes WLM a perfect proxy for researchers like McQueen aiming to study early star formation rates.

"In looking so deeply and seeing so clearly, we've been able to, effectively, go back in time," McQuinn said. “You’re basically going on a kind of archaeological dig to find the very low-mass stars that were formed early in the history of the universe.”

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Studying faint galaxies has huge scientific rewards

Scrutinising low-mass and faint galaxies like WLM helps in big scientific rewards. On top of it, WLM is in a strategic position in the dumbbell-shaped local group. Because existing at the edge of this gathering, it has kept WLM isolated and has prevented the gravitational influence of other galaxies from ravaging its stellar population.

In addition to its position, WLM is a dynamic, complex system of gas and dust, which makes it a much more fascinating target for astronomers.

To study WLM’s star formation history and the rate at which stars were born, the team zoomed in on the galaxy with JWST. The team then measured these stars’ colours and brightness to determine their ages.

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"We can use what we know about stellar evolution and what these colours and brightnesses indicate to age the galaxy’s stars basically," McQuinn said.

She and her colleagues turned to the Amarel high-performance computing cluster, managed by the Rutgers Office of Advanced Research Computing, to possess the JWST's data. This allowed them to count the stars of different ages and thus chart the birth rate of stars over the history of the universe.

(With inputs from agencies)