Nancy Grace Roman Could Find the First Stars in the Universe

By Brian Koberlein - January 26, 2024 03:12 PM UTC | Cosmology
The first stars in the Universe were made out of the primordial hydrogen and helium left over from the Big Bang. They were probably monsterous, with dozens or even hundreds of times the mass of the Sun. They lived short lives and then detonated as supernovae. Current telescopes will have a tough time spotting these stars, but a new paper suggests that the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope might have a clever trick to spot them.
Continue reading

Webb Sees Dozens Of Young Quasars in the First Billion Years of the Universe

By Brian Koberlein - January 24, 2024 01:52 PM UTC | Extragalactic
One of JWST's big tasks is to help astronomers understand how the early Universe came together, with dwarf galaxies merging into larger, more mature galaxies. Supermassive black holes at these galaxies' hearts also grew, shining as quasars within the first billion years. A new paper uses several extragalactic surveys by JWST to find dozens of compact galaxies that seem to host faint quasars as young as 650 million years after the Big Bang.
Continue reading