James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

JADES | Possible Population III signatures at z=10.6 in the halo of GN-z11

JADES team, who studies the early universe, presented their results for using the distant galaxy GN-z11's halo in order to detect the first generation of start in the early universe. According to the abstract, "finding the first generation of stars formed out of pristine gas in the early Universe, known as Population III (PopIII) stars, is one of the most important goals of modern astrophysics. Recent models suggest that PopIII stars may form in pockets of pristine gas in the halo of more evolved galaxies". They presented NIRSpec observations which consists with PopIII stars, which also indicate that the putative PopIII stars likely have a top-heavy initial mass function (IMF), with an upper cutoff reaching at least 500 solar masses. There's another, less favoured scenario of an accreting Direct Collapse Black Hole (DCBH) hosted by the HeII clump. (F277W NIRCam)