Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have found three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, formed when the cosmos was only 400 to 600 million years old.
In images taken by the telescope, this galactic trio resembles faint red blobs feeding on nearby helium and hydrogen.
These elements sustain such galaxies as they grow and help shape them into the familiar ellipses and spirals we see throughout the cosmos, writes the Space portal.
“One could say that these are the first ”direct” images of galaxy formation that we have ever seen,” said study author Kasper Elm Heinz, an astrophysicist at the Danish DAVN Center.
He said that “James Webb” has so far shown the early galaxies in the later stages of their evolution, and that here we are witnessing their birth, and thus the construction of the first star systems in the universe.
Study co-author Darrat Watson said these early galaxies were “like shimmering islands in a sea of neutral, opaque gas.” This gas was created in the early stages of the universe from hydrogen atoms and began to form about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe was completely dark.
Photo: NASA
