The Firefly Sparkle Galaxy: A Milky Way-like "Baby Picture" | Webb Telescope

The Firefly Sparkle Galaxy:  A Milky Way-like "Baby Picture" | Webb Telescope

For the first time, astronomers have identified a still-forming galaxy that weighs about the same as our Milky Way if we could wind back the clock to see our galaxy as it developed. The newly identified galaxy, the Firefly Sparkle, is in the process of assembling and forming stars, and existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang.

The image of this galaxy is stretched and warped by a natural effect known as gravitational lensing. It allows researchers to obtain far more information about its contents. (Areas of this Webb image are magnified over 40 times.)

While it took shape, the galaxy gleamed with star clusters in a range of infrared colors. These are scientifically meaningful. They indicate that the stars formed at different periods, not all at once.

Since this galaxy image is stretched into a long line in Webb’s observations, researchers were able to identify 10 distinct star clusters and study them individually, along with the cocoon of diffuse light from the additional, unresolved stars surrounding them. This is not always possible for distant galaxies that are not lensed. Instead, in many cases, researchers can only draw conclusions that apply to an entire galaxy. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched and we are not able to see the ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” explains astronomer Lamiya Mowla.

There are two companion galaxies ‘hovering’ close by that may ultimately affect how this galaxy forms and builds mass over billions of years. Firefly Sparkle is only about 6,500 light-years away from its first companion, and 42,000 light-years from its second companion. Let us compare these figures to objects that are closer to home: the Sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across. In contrast, Firefly Sparkle’s companions are relatively very close. Researchers also suspect that they are orbiting one another.

Image Description: Horizontal split down the middle. At left, thousands of overlapping objects at varying distances are spread across this galaxy cluster. A box at bottom right is enlarged on the right half. A central oval identifies the Firefly Sparkle galaxy, a line with 10 dots in various colors.

Credit: NASA, European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia)

Release Date: Dec. 11, 2024

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Stars #Galaxies #GalaxyClusters #GalaxyCluster #MACSMACSJ142382404 #FireflySparkleGalaxy #GravitationalLensing #Bootes #Constellation #Astrophysics #Cosmos #Universe #JWST #NIRCam #Infrared #SpaceTelescopes #ESA #CSA #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Infographic #STEM #Education