UNCOVER-z12

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/uncover-z12

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the redshift (z)?Approximately 12.38
2. What is the estimated lookback time?Over 13 billion years
3. Why is UNCOVER-z12 so special?It is one of the earliest known galaxies, forming about 700 million years after the Big Bang. Studying it helps scientists learn how the first galaxies grew and changed the early universe.
4. How do scientists find galaxies like UNCOVER-z12?Astronomers use powerful telescopes to take very deep pictures of the sky. They then measure the light’s redshift to see how far and how old the galaxy is.

Epoch of Reionization: The period when the universe transitioned from a neutral state to an ionized state due to radiation from early stars and galaxies.
Cosmological Redshift: The stretching of light wavelengths due to the expansion of space, used to measure distances to very distant objects.
Metallicity: In astronomy, the abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in a celestial object, indicating prior stellar evolution.
Gravitational Lensing: The bending of light by massive objects, which can magnify and distort the images of background sources.