Take a Journey with James Webb to Maisie's Galaxy , 13.4 billion Light years Away

Douglas Adams told us of the restaurant at the End of the Universe so possibly the restaurant at the beginning of the Universe is in Maisie's Galaxy.

This 3D visualization portrays the nearest 5,000 galaxies on a journey traveling 200 million light-years a second , Time Travel.

The area highlighted in this visualization is a small part of the Extended Groth Strip, a region between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations originally observed by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2004 and 2005. While this vast region contains about 100,000 galaxies, the visualization focuses on approximately 5,000 – with the nearest and more complex galaxies, shown in the beginning, located within a few billion light-years of Earth. As the visualization proceeds, showing galaxies farther away from Earth, we see different stages of the universe’s history and evolution.

The visualization’s farthest galaxy, known as Maisie’s Galaxy, is a target of great interest to astronomers. It formed about 390 million years after the big bang, or about 13.4 billion years ago. It’s not only one of the first bright, extremely distant galaxies found by Webb, but it’s also an example of an early galaxy that only Webb could see. This is because Webb’s instruments can capture the light from these early galaxies, which has been shifted to infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe.
www.nasa.gov...

a reply to: gortex

They have pictures of the Big Bang Burger Bar? That is amazingly froopy!

From a long, long, long, long, long time ago. A galaxy far, far, far, far, far away.

a reply to: gortex

i want to see more, damn it! thanks for posting and thanks for all the fish!

In case anyone wants to study the historical documents of this 42. I recently located this little link. Share and enjoy.

Don't Panic!

a reply to: gortex

For us lay people, it would be helpful and fun to see a diagram showing speed and distance traveled as we zoom to the target galaxy. I was always fascinated during Televised space launches, by the speed increasing and the miles piling up faster and faster on the dial.

a reply to: carewemust

Assuming you start from Earth, you are on that planet aren't you? And assuming you stopped a small number of light years away to get that view, say between 1 and 10 light years. You were traveling at just over 7047 trillion times the speed of light. 13.4 billion light years in just over 1 minute.

You will definitely need an infinite improbability drive for that.

See the link I posted above for reference material on the 'Resteraunt at the End of the Universe', the 'Infinite Improbability Drive' and why you need to always carry a towel.

My towel is a dull grey quick dry camping towel. Not a looker but very practical. You can swim with it, wring it out, then dry off with it.

originally posted by: gortex
"Take a Journey with James Webb to Maisie's Galaxy , 13.4 billion Light years Away"
...
"This is because Webb’s instruments can capture the light from these early galaxies, which has been shifted to infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe."
www.nasa.gov...

Interesting video, kind of a warp speed flight of the imagination.

Maisie's Galaxy is not 13.4 billion light years away, as your thread title says. I found articles saying that but they are wrong, and your NASA source doesn't make that mistake.

Since the light has been traveling for 13.4 billion years at the speed of light, a common misunderstanding is that means the light source is 13.4 billion light years away, but the statement you quoted about light "shifted to infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe" explains why that is not so.

Because of that "red shift" you mentioned, you can be sure Maisie's Galaxy is much further than 13.4 billion light years away. How far away do you suppose it is? Maisie's galaxy has a "z" (aka "redshift") of 11.4. So you find 11.4 on the logarithmic scale on the bottom of the graph below (maybe not easy if you're not familiar with logarithmic scales), then draw a vertical line up to the black curve which is distance, then draw a horizontal line from that, and you get the distance to the z=11.4 galaxy (Maisie's Galaxy), about 32 billion light years away, perhaps a bit more.

Redshift

I added the 2 red lines which show the distance of 32 billion light years from the black curve. The dotted red curve shows how long the light has been travelling (For maisie's galaxy, a "lookback time" of 13.4 billion years) multiplied by the speed of light.

You can try yourself to see if you come up with the same answers, or if you are really ambitious, you could do the math, but our models could be slightly off (see tension in the Hubble constant), so this is not the kind of thing where exact calculations are needed.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

You can try yourself to see if you come up with the same answers, or if you are really ambitious, you could do the math

I'll skip out on the math thanks , I leave that to those who know their Multiplication tables.