The Galaxy Gz9p3/Official Site, NASA/Boyett
The Hubble Space Telescope, which served for decades as humanity's eyes in the universe, discovered many years ago a small point of light in deep space.
That seemingly innocuous spot recently became a window into the unknown, when the Advanced Space Telescope James Webb revealed it as an ancient and spectacular galaxy—one of the oldest ever discovered.
This amazing discovery is further evidence of the extraordinary capabilities of the James Webb Telescope, developed by NASA in international cooperation. While Hubble saw only a small speck of light, James Webb was able to penetrate through the veil of time and distance and discover an entire, large and complex galaxy , which was named Gz9p3, and was only 510 million years old after the Big Bang.
The researchers found that, like other ancient galaxies observed by Webb, Gz9p3 is also massive and much older than expected for a galaxy in the young universe. At the ancient time when it was observed, it already appeared to contain billions of stars. However, the discovery presents researchers with a new cosmic mystery: How did young galaxies grow so rapidly to such enormous dimensions? In fact, Gz9p3 is not only more massive than expected, but 10 times more massive than other galaxies Webb has detected at similar times in the universe.
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While Hubble saw only a small speck of light, James Webb was able to penetrate through the veil of time and distance and discover an entire galaxy.
Gz9p3/Official Site, NASA/Boyett
"Just a few years ago, Gz9p3 was visible as a single point of light through the Hubble Space Telescope," team member Keith Boyatt, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, wrote in the institute's publication.
"But with the help of the Web, we could view this object as it was 510 million years after the Big Bang, about 13 billion years ago."
Also, during the research, the scientific team was able to determine that the galaxy has a complex shape with dense nuclei.
This fact suggests that distant Gz9p3 likely formed from the collision of two ancient galaxies in the young universe.
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