Quasars are supermassive black holes that emit powerful jets of radiation. The brilliant light from quasars outshines the light of the galaxies that host them, making it extremely challenging to study the galaxies' properties, including how stars formed within them in the early universe.
"It is like trying to see a candle next to a searchlight," said Ryan Endsley, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory and lead author of the study. "The candle is so much fainter than the searchlight that it is nearly impossible to see. But with very careful observations, we think that JWST just might be able to reveal the candle."
The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2021. It is the next-generation space telescope that NASA says is "designed to unravel the mysteries of our cosmic origins."
The Webb telescope is so sensitive that it should be able to detect the faint light from distant galaxies even when it is overwhelmed by the intense light of a quasar. To investigate this possibility, Endsley and his team simulated observations with the Webb Telescope of 28 quasars.
"For about a third of our sample, we found that JWST should be able to detect the light from the galaxies that are hidden by the quasar's glare," Endsley said. "What is really exciting is that we will then be able to use JWST to study the detailed properties of these galaxies, including what types of stars they formed and how their properties might change over time."
By understanding the properties of these distant galaxies, astronomers can learn more about how galaxies formed and evolved in the early universe, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
