It was an active final day at the First Science Results from JWST conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, US, where discussion turned to some incredible observations of quasars above redshift 6, showing them as they existed more than 12.7 billion years ago.
As the compact cores of galaxies with extremely active supermassive black holes, we know that quasars can shine many times brighter than their host galaxy. In his presentation, John Silverman of the University of Tokyo described how data from the JWST’s CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) survey is following up on a dozen high-redshift quasars originally identified by the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.
Throughout the conference, astronomers have joked that high redshift no longer means what it used to mean. Before the JWST came along, high redshift for the Hubble Space Telescope meant resolving the host galaxies of quasars out to about redshift 2, or roughly 10 billion years in the past. Now, the JWST is resolving the structures of host galaxies around quasars at redshift 6 (almost 12.7 billion years ago).
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