A sparkling galaxy dating from just 600 million years after the Big Bang has provided our first-ever glimpse of what a galaxy like our Milky Way looked like just as it was beginning to form.
Astronomers took notice of the galaxy due to the 10 bright star clusters shining within it, the source of its nickname: ‘Firefly Sparkle’.
It was discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope, making it yet another Webb discovery that's changing astronomers' understanding of what the early Universe was like.
On closer inspection, the team behind the study they were surprised to find that the galaxy is much lighter than most others we know of in the early Universe and could be an analogue for our own Galaxy’s early days.
Firefly Sparkle is visible because it’s gravitationally lensed, where its light is bent around a massive foreground galaxy cluster.
The effect magnifies but distorts the object, transforming it into a distinctive long thin arc.
Fortunately, researchers were able to undo the effect and predict what the Firefly Sparkle galaxy should look like.
"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," says Lamiya Mowla from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, who took part in the study.
"With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick."
www.webbtelescope.org
