James Webb telescope ‘will see the universe’s first stars’

THE first stars ever formed will be seen on camera going supernova by the James Webb telescope “in the next year”, a leading astronomer believes.

Joe Biden released the first picture from the James Webb Space Telescope two weeks ago and there has been a deluge of data and images from the $10billion (£8.3billion) piece of equipment.

Infrared instruments onboard the world’s marquee observatory are peering further back into the universe than ever before and are trying to shed light on the “dark ages” of the universe which span the first few hundred million years after the big bang.

Harvard experts published an image of a galaxy that existed 300million years after the universe’s inception, which was 13.5 billion years ago.

But Chris Conselice, professor of extragalactic astronomy at the Univer- sity of Manchester, believes the telescope will be able to go much further back. His team has published two papers, with a third due today.

He said: This is preliminary stuff, but we’re finding more galaxies than we would have anticipated already. I suspect that we’ll find some of the very first stars and galaxies ever... probably in the next year.”

Prof Conselice believes stars from 13.75billion years ago could be seen thanks to the telescope’s infrared instruments. He said: “I’m guessing [the first stars may have emerged] between 50 to 100 million years after the big bang. That would be my guess.

“That’s quite a ways back so hopefully we can see this.”

In the very infancy of the universe, scattered gas from the big bang would cool down to a star-forming temperature and the chaotic gaseous debris would aggregate and become denser.

How long these processes take is a mystery; one Prof Conselice hopes James Webb Space Telescope can also help shed some light on. He said: “These big, high-mass stars, which is what the theory suggests, should blow up in a massive supernova.

“So, we should be able to see the explosion of stars happening in the early universe. So that’s something that people including our team is looking for. That’ll be spectacular, and I think we’ll find it, actually.”

His team has a year of exclusivity on the research, in which time he hopes he will reduce the current “dark ages” that which lie beyond the scope of Nasa’s Hubble telescope.

13.75bn

The age of stars that it is the hoped the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to film with its infrared cameras