The CEERS field is a particular area of space captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows myriad distant, old galaxies, but one of them might just be the oldest.
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00:00 [Music]
00:04 This is what is known as the Sears Field, or a particular area of space captured by
00:08 the James Webb Space Telescope.
00:10 It shows myriad distant old galaxies, but this one right here might just be the oldest.
00:15 It's called Macy's Galaxy, and it doesn't look like much, just a red splotch on the
00:19 black backdrop of the vacuum of space.
00:21 But experts say that's expected.
00:23 That's because the universe is constantly expanding, meaning these distant objects are
00:27 literally getting further away, causing their light to be stretched.
00:30 This is called redshift, and causes extremely distant objects to appear as red, elongated
00:35 entities like this one.
00:36 So how old is the oldest galaxy ever discovered?
00:39 Experts say based on the photometry of the galaxy, the light we are seeing likely traveled
00:43 for some 13.4 billion years before it reached us, meaning the galaxy came into existence
00:48 just 390 million years after the Big Bang.
00:52 Another extremely old galaxy in the same field is called Sears 93316.
00:57 It was once thought to have been formed only 250 million years after the Big Bang.
01:01 However, spectroscopic follow-up revealed it was actually created around 1.2 billion
01:06 years after the universe creating event.
01:09 [music]