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ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy, named UGC 10043. We don’t see the galaxy’s spiral arms because we are seeing it from the side. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that we see edge-on.
This edge-on viewpoint makes the galaxy’s disk appear as a sharp line through space, with its prominent dust lanes forming thick bands of clouds that obscure our view of the galaxy’s glow. If we could fly above the galaxy, viewing it from the top down, we would see this dust scattered across UGC 10043, possibly outlining its spiral arms. Despite the dust’s obscuring nature, some active star-forming regions shine out from behind the dark clouds. We can also see that the galaxy’s center sports a glowing, almost egg-shaped ‘bulge’, rising far above and below the disk. All spiral galaxies have a bulge similar to this one as part of their structure. These bulges hold stars that orbit the galactic center on paths above and below the whirling disk; it’s a feature that isn’t normally obvious in pictures of galaxies. The unusually large size of this bulge compared to the galaxy’s disk is possibly due to UGC 10043 siphoning material from a nearby dwarf galaxy. This may also be why its disk appears warped, bending up at one end and down at the other.
Like most full-color Hubble images, this image is a composite, made up of several individual snapshots taken by Hubble at different times, each capturing different wavelengths of light. One notable aspect of this image is that the two sets of data that comprise this image were collected 23 years apart, in 2000 and 2023! Hubble’s longevity doesn’t just afford us the ability to produce new and better images of old targets; it also provides a long-term archive of data which only becomes more and more useful to astronomers.
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By European Space Agency
For the first time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has detected and ‘weighed’ a galaxy, in the early Universe, that has a mass that is similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Found at around 600 million years after the Big Bang, this lightweight galaxy, nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, is gleaming with star clusters – 10 in total – that researchers examined in great detail. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this period in the history of the Universe are significantly more massive.
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By NASA
Webb Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 6 Min Read Found: First Actively Forming Galaxy as Lightweight as Young Milky Way
Hundreds of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this field. At the very center is a tiny galaxy nicknamed Firefly Sparkle that looks like a long, angled, dotted line. Smaller companions are nearby. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Chris Willott (National Research Council Canada), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College), Kartheik Iyer (Columbia University) For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around 600 million years after the big bang, but is also similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this time period are significantly more massive. Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, this galaxy is gleaming with star clusters — 10 in all — each of which researchers examined in great detail.
Image A: Firefly Sparkle Galaxy and Companions in Galaxy Cluster MACS J1423 (NIRCam Image)
For the first time, astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified a galaxy, nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, that not only is in the process of assembling and forming stars around 600 million years after the big bang, but also weighs about the same as our Milky Way galaxy if we could “wind back the clock” to weigh it as it developed. Two companion galaxies are close by, which may ultimately affect how this galaxy forms and builds mass over billions of years. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Chris Willott (National Research Council Canada), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College), Kartheik Iyer (Columbia University) “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 Lamiya Mowla, co-lead author of the paper and an assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. “There is so much going on inside this tiny galaxy, including so many different phases of star formation.”
Webb was able to image the galaxy in crisp detail for two reasons. One is a benefit of the cosmos: A massive foreground galaxy cluster 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 infrared light, Webb delivered unprecedented new data about the galaxy’s contents.
Image B: Galaxy Cluster MACS J1423 (NIRCam Image)
In this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423. The largest, bright white oval is a supergiant elliptical galaxy. The galaxy cluster acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting the light of objects that lie well behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Chris Willott (National Research Council Canada), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College), Kartheik Iyer (Columbia University) “Without the benefit of this gravitational lens, we would not be able to resolve this galaxy,” said Kartheik Iyer, co-lead author and NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York. “We knew to expect it based on current physics, but it’s surprising that we actually saw it.”
Mowla, who spotted the galaxy in Webb’s image, was drawn to its gleaming star clusters, because objects that sparkle typically indicate they are extremely clumpy and complicated. Since the galaxy looks like a “sparkle” or swarm of lightning bugs on a warm summer night, they named it the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.
Reconstructing the Galaxy’s Appearance
The research team modeled what the galaxy might have looked like if it weren’t stretched and discovered that it resembled an elongated raindrop. Suspended within it are two star clusters toward the top and eight toward the bottom. “Our reconstruction shows that clumps of actively forming stars are surrounded by diffuse light from other unresolved stars,” said Iyer. “This galaxy is literally in the process of assembling.”
Webb’s data shows the Firefly Sparkle galaxy is on the smaller side, falling into the category of a low-mass galaxy. Billions of years will pass before it builds its full heft and a distinct shape. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched, and we are not able to see their ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” Mowla said.
Stretched Out and Shining, Ready for Close Analysis
Since the galaxy is warped into a long arc, the researchers easily picked out 10 distinct star clusters, which are emitting the bulk of the galaxy’s light. They are represented here in shades of pink, purple, and blue. Those colors in Webb’s images and its supporting spectra confirmed that star formation didn’t happen all at once in this galaxy, but was staggered in time.
“This galaxy has a diverse population of star clusters, and it is remarkable that we can see them separately at such an early age of the universe,” said Chris Willott from the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, a co-author and the observation program’s principal investigator. “Each clump of stars is undergoing a different phase of formation or evolution.”
The galaxy’s projected shape shows that its stars haven’t settled into a central bulge or a thin, flattened disk, another piece of evidence that the galaxy is still forming.
Image C: Illustration of the Firefly Sparkle Galaxy in the Early Universe (Artist’s Concept)
This artist concept depicts a reconstruction of what the Firefly Sparkle galaxy looked like about 600 million years after the big bang if it wasn’t stretched and distorted by a natural effect known as gravitational lensing. This illustration is based on images and data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI). Science: Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College), Guillaume Desprez (Saint Mary’s University) Video: “Firefly Sparkle” Reveals Early Galaxy
‘Glowing’ Companions
Researchers can’t predict how this disorganized galaxy will build up and take shape over billions of years, but there are two galaxies that the team confirmed are “hanging out” within a tight perimeter and may influence how it builds mass over billions of years.
Firefly Sparkle is only 6,500 light-years away from its first companion, and its second companion is separated by 42,000 light-years. For context, the fully formed Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across — all three would fit inside it. Not only are its companions very close, the researchers also think that they are orbiting one another.
Each time one galaxy passes another, gas condenses and cools, allowing new stars to form in clumps, adding to the galaxies’ masses. “It has long been predicted that galaxies in the early universe form through successive interactions and mergers with other tinier galaxies,” said Yoshihisa Asada, a co-author and doctoral student at Kyoto University in Japan. “We might be witnessing this process in action.”
The team’s research relied on data from Webb’s CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS), which includes near-infrared images from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and spectra from the microshutter array aboard NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). The CANUCS data intentionally covered a field that NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope imaged as part of its Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) program.
This work has been published on December 11, 2024 in the journal Nature.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Dec 10, 2024 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Spots a Spiral in the… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 2 min read
Hubble Spots a Spiral in the Celestial River
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 1637. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the River.
This image comes from an observing program dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.
NGC 1637 holds evidence of star formation scattered throughout its disk, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms have pockets of pink clouds, many with bright blue stars. The pinkish color comes from hydrogen atoms excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars forming within the clouds. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s center, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.
The stars that set their cloudy birthplaces aglow are comparatively short-lived, and many of these stars will explode as supernovae just a few million years after they’re born. In 1999, NGC 1637 played host to a supernova named SN 1999EM, lauded as the brightest supernova seen that year. When a massive star expires as a supernova, the explosion outshines its entire home galaxy for a short time. While a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also jump start the formation of new stars by compressing nearby clouds of gas, beginning the stellar lifecycle anew.
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Takes the… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 4 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Astronomers have used the unique capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to peer closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. A quasar is a galactic center that glows brightly as the black hole consumes material in its immediate surroundings.
The new Hubble views of the environment around the quasar show a lot of “weird things,” according to Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”
Some of the objects could be small satellite galaxies falling into the black hole, and so they could offer the materials that will accrete onto the central supermassive black hole, powering the bright lighthouse. “Thanks to Hubble’s observing power, we’re opening a new gateway into understanding quasars,” said Ren. “My colleagues are excited because they’ve never seen this much detail before.”
Quasars look starlike as point sources of light in the sky (hence the name quasi-stellar object). The quasar in the new study, 3C 273, was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt as the first quasar. At a distance of 2.5 billion light-years it was too far away for a star. It must have been more energetic than ever imagined, with a luminosity over 10 times brighter than the brightest giant elliptical galaxies. This opened the door to an unexpected new puzzle in cosmology: What is powering this massive energy production? The likely culprit was material accreting onto a black hole.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar. This allows astronomers to see unprecedented details near the black hole such as weird filaments, lobes, and a mysterious L-shaped structure, probably caused by small galaxies being devoured by the black hole. Located 2.5 billion light-years away, 3C 273 is the first quasar (quasi-stellar object) ever discovered, in 1963. NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) In 1994 Hubble’s new sharp view revealed that the environment surrounding quasars is far more complex than first suspected. The images suggested galactic collisions and mergers between quasars and companion galaxies, where debris cascades down onto supermassive black holes. This reignites the giant black holes that drive quasars.
For Hubble, staring into the quasar 3C 273 is like looking directly into a blinding car headlight and trying to see an ant crawling on the rim around it. The quasar pours out thousands of times the entire energy of stars in a galaxy. One of closest quasars to Earth, 3C 273 is 2.5 billion light-years away. (If it was very nearby, a few tens of light-years from Earth, it would appear as bright as the Sun in the sky!) Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) can serve as a coronagraph to block light from central sources, not unlike how the Moon blocks the Sun’s glare during a total solar eclipse. Astronomers have used STIS to unveil dusty disks around stars to understand the formation of planetary systems, and now they can use STIS to better understand quasars’ host galaxies. The Hubble coronograph allowed astronomers to look eight times closer to the black hole than ever before.
Scientists got rare insight into the quasar’s 300,000-light-year-long extragalactic jet of material blazing across space at nearly the speed of light. By comparing the STIS coronagraphic data with archival STIS images with a 22-year separation, the team led by Ren concluded that the jet is moving faster when it is farther away from the monster black hole.
“With the fine spatial structures and jet motion, Hubble bridged a gap between the small-scale radio interferometry and large-scale optical imaging observations, and thus we can take an observational step towards a more complete understanding of quasar host morphology. Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail. In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues,” said Ren.
At least 1 million quasars are scattered across the sky. They are useful background “spotlights” for a variety of astronomical observations. Quasars were most abundant about 3 billion years after the big bang, when galaxy collisions were more common.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Bin Ren
Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, France
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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