An international research team has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe massive galaxies discovered by the Subaru Telescope in a corner of the early universe known as the Spiderweb protocluster. The JWST results confirm what had been suggested from the Subaru Telescope observations, namely that supermassive black hole activity can truncate the growth of galaxies.
These results appear in the paper “Spider-Webb: JWST Near Infrared Camera resolved galaxy star formation and nuclear activities in the Spiderweb protocluster at z=2.16” in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on December 18, 2024.
The growth and evolution of galaxies is a major theme in modern astronomy. The origin of giant elliptical galaxies is one riddle. These galaxies consist entirely of old stars, so something early in their evolution must have shut off star formation in the progenitors of giant elliptical galaxies. According to one theory, the supermassive black holes at the hearts of the galaxies may play a role in determining the star formation.
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