TY - JOUR
T1 - The onset of star formation 250 million years after the Big Bang
AU - Hashimoto, Takuya
AU - Laporte, Nicolas
AU - Mawatari, Ken
AU - Ellis, Richard S.
AU - Inoue, Akio K.
AU - Zackrisson, Erik
AU - Roberts-Borsani, Guido
AU - Zheng, Wei
AU - Tamura, Yoichi
AU - Bauer, Franz E.
AU - Fletcher, Thomas
AU - Harikane, Yuichi
AU - Hatsukade, Bunyo
AU - Hayatsu, Natsuki H.
AU - Matsuda, Yuichi
AU - Matsuo, Hiroshi
AU - Okamoto, Takashi
AU - Ouchi, Masami
AU - Pelló, Roser
AU - Rydberg, Claes Erik
AU - Shimizu, Ikkoh
AU - Taniguchi, Yoshiaki
AU - Umehata, Hideki
AU - Yoshida, Naoki
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2018/5/17
Y1 - 2018/5/17
N2 - 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 Bang 1-3 . The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline 4,5 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-JD1 6, 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.
AB - 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 Bang 1-3 . The abundance of star-forming galaxies is known to decline 4,5 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-JD1 6, 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.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z
DO - 10.1038/s41586-018-0117-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 29769675
AN - SCOPUS:85047073454
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 557
SP - 392
EP - 395
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7705
ER -