BREAKING Iran fires air defence batteries in provinces as sound of explosions heard near Isfahan
Iran fired air defence batteries early Friday morning after reports of explosions near the city of Isfahan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
In a galaxy nine billion light years away shines a form of star clusters that these Canadian researchers hope will shed new details on the universe’s earliest discoveries.
A team of researchers with the Canadian Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team found evidence of the oldest distant globular clusters. These clusters were spotted in the "Sparkler Galaxy," notable captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s First Deep Field image in July.
Lamiya Mowla and Kartheik Iyer, co-lead authors and fellows at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, published their findings on Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Their team observed the galaxy as it was nine billion years ago, when the universe was just four-and-a-half billion years old. Out of the 12 globular clusters analyzed, five of them are estimated to be about four billion years old themselves.
“So that means that these stars were formed very early on in the universe, right after the big bang, where the first stars were getting born; that's the era when the star clusters were born,” Mowla said to CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Thursday.
The researchers were able to observe the objects through the use of the James Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared (NIR) camera, along with archival data from the Hubble Space telescope. However, it was the Canadian-made Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument on Webb telescope that was able to determine how old these clusters are.
Iyer says while the Webb telescope was intended to find early data of the universe, their team was still surprised to find these clusters, specifically ones that are billions of years old.
“Objects like the Sparkler were an ‘unknown unknown' – we didn't know that we didn't know about them – so finding it was really exciting,” Iyer said to CTVNews.ca on Thursday.
As they continue with their research, both say they are looking forward to discovering what else they can learn about these globular clusters and perhaps similar "unknown unknown" objects they didn’t know about. Iyer says through further investigation with the NIR they are hoping to determine how big these clusters are, how they are formed and even more details on the Sparkler Galaxy itself.
Iyer says their research is a testament to the incredible data that has been found since the James Webb telescope’s launch less than a year ago that he said its predecessor, the Hubble Space telescope, took years to capture.
“It's showing us the higher edge of the universe that up until now was all of these faint fuzzy blobs, which actually have a lot more structure to it than we expected,” he said. “We're seeing these really pretty spirals, these merging galaxies, all of these like weird objects with the Webb data that Hubble didn't have enough resolution to see, so it's really cool.”
Iran fired air defence batteries early Friday morning after reports of explosions near the city of Isfahan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Nearly half of China's major cities are suffering 'moderate to severe' levels of subsidence, putting millions at risk of flooding especially as sea levels rise.
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.
The judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of fatally running over a Toronto police officer is telling jurors the possible verdicts they may reach based on the evidence in the case.
Health Canada will change its longstanding policy restricting gay and bisexual men from donating to sperm banks in Canada, CTV News has learned. The federal health agency has adopted a revised directive removing the ban on gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, effective May 8.
Colin Jost, who co-anchors Saturday Night Live's 'Weekend Update,' revealed who he thinks is one of the best hosts on the show.
A male columnist has apologized for a cringeworthy moment during former University of Iowa superstar and college basketball's highest scorer Caitlin Clark's first news conference as an Indiana Fever player.
Sophie Kinsella, the best-selling author behind the 'Shopaholic' book series, has revealed that she is receiving treatment for brain cancer.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.
While many people choose to keep their medical appointments private, four longtime friends decided to undergo vasectomies as a group in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.