Source: The Universe is Brighter Than we Thought - Universe Today Now that it (New Horizon rjw) is passing through the Kuiper Belt, away from the light pollution of the inner Solar System, it has another lucrative mission: measuring the brightness of the Universe. These measurements will allow astronomers to make more accurate estimates of how many galaxies there are, which is still the subject of debate. According to new measurementsby New Horizons, the light coming from stars beyond the Milky Way is two to three times brighter than the light from known populations of galaxies – meaning that there are even more out there than we thought! Bob Wilson
I was wondering how much of this light might come from the very first galaxies, which first hints from the Webb telescope (JWST) suggest are much more numerous than we expected. But New Horizons' instrument making these measurements, LORRI, is viewing mostly in or close to the human optical range, with a bandpass filter of 350 - 850 nm. JWST has very little overlap with this, viewing from 600 to 28,000 nm. What it is finding back when stars and galaxies first formed, is mostly red-shifted out of New Horizons / LORRI's sensing range. I.e. New Horizons is sensing light that is mostly younger and thus closer than what JWST's deep fields are revealing. So scratch that idea. Another issue -- if there is more light than expected, then this may mean that there is more ordinary matter out there than previously believed, which alters the 'ordinary' vs 'dark' matter ratio of the universe. This would have a major impact on cosmology.
