News from DAWN
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Kasper Elm Heintz among Berlingske’s Top 100 Talents
Congratulations to Kasper Elm Heintz, assistant professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center, who has been selected as one of the top 100 talents in Denmark 2025 in Berlingske’s annual award for his discoveries in observational astronomy and his contribution to our understanding of the early Universe.
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James Webb discovers earliest sign of the Universe becoming transparent
The first galaxies in the Universe were born enshrouded in a “foggy” gas, and could not be seen clearly until they had cleared up this fog. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen has now detected the hitherto most distant — and hence earliest — sign of this important epoch in the history of the Universe. A galaxy, seen only 330 million years after the Big Bang, has formed a bubble of transparent gas around itself, revealing that the epoch began earlier than thought. The result has been published in the prestigious journal Nature.
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New insights into galaxy growth and dark matter from James Webb
Mapping cosmic history: An international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, has released a comprehensive study on how galaxies and their dark matter have evolved across most of the history of the Universe. Spanning 11 billion years, this unprecedented survey reveals unexpected patterns in galaxy mass, growth rates, and the relationship between galaxies and dark matter. The study challenges existing models of galaxy formation and hints at a new understanding of how these immense cosmic structures emerged.
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Webb provides a new detailed look into the formation of the first galaxies
In the past few years, the James Webb Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of how the first stars and galaxies formed in the early Universe. Now, an international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, have published the first, large-scale study of more than 600 galaxies observed within the first billion years after the Big Bang. This survey moves the field from studying the first few discoveries with Webb, to establishing large, statistical samples of galaxies. Intriguingly, this study reveals how some of the earliest galaxies accrete massive amounts of pristine gas from their surroundings, a sign that we are now seeing the formation of galaxies in progress.
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