Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, the newly-discovered galaxy existed approximately 600 million years after the Big Bang and consisted of a least 10 star clusters.
The most distant galaxies detected are from when the Universe was around 5% of its current age.
However, these galaxies are around 10,000 times less massive than the Milky Way and their low mass makes them difficult to observe.
The Firefly Sparkle galaxy was first observed with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, but new detailed observations from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shed further light on the galaxy’s formation.
“I didn’t think it would be possible to resolve a galaxy that existed so early in the Universe into so many distinct components, let alone find that its mass is similar to our own Galaxy’s when it was in the process of forming,” said Dr. Lamiya Mowla, an astronomer at Wellesley College.
“There is so much going on inside this tiny galaxy, including so many different phases of star formation.”
Webb was able to image the Firefly Sparkle galaxy in sufficient detail for two reasons.
One is a benefit of the cosmos: a massive foreground galaxy cluster called MACS J1423.8+2404 radically enhanced the distant galaxy’s appearance through a natural effect known as gravitational lensing.
And when combined with the telescope’s specialization in high-resolution imaging of infrared light, Webb delivered unprecedented new data about the galaxy’s contents.
“Without the benefit of this gravitational lens, we would not be able to resolve this galaxy,” said Dr. Kartheik Iyer, an astronomer at Columbia University.
“We knew to expect it based on current physics, but it’s surprising that we actually saw it.”
The astronomers also observed two neighboring galaxies, which they name Firefly-Best Friend and Firefly-New Best Friend, located at 6,000 and 40,000 light-years from Firefly Sparkle, respectively, less than the size of the present day Milky Way.
Firefly…
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