“James Webb” spotted a newborn twin of the Milky Way in the early Universe

«Where did the Milky Way come from?” scientists ask, to paraphrase Nestor the Chronicler. It is possible to reconstruct the evolutionary paths of our galaxy by studying similar objects from the time of their origin in the early Universe. For the trillions of galaxies in the Universe, there are billions that are barely distinguishable from the Milky Way. One of these galaxies was discovered due to gravitational lensing. This is the newborn twin of our galaxy – it is only 600 million years old.

Image source: NASA

The twin galaxy of the Milky Way received the poetic name Firefly Sparkle. Our instruments would never have detected it (except as a spark) if there had not been a huge galactic cluster in the path of the light from it. The cluster’s mass created a lensing effect, refracting and amplifying light from a distant galaxy. Thanks to this, scientists were able to discern its structure and identify several star formation zones in it.

Basically, success in observing this object was achieved due to the high sensitivity of the infrared sensors of the space observatory named after. James Webb. It was his sensors that helped create an image of a distant and young galaxy after the distortions inevitable during gravitational lensing.

The Firefly Sparkle Galaxy is observed 600 million years after the Big Bang. It has 10 distinct zones of active star formation. Each zone has a mass of 105 to 106 solar masses. These observations give science the first spectrophotometric view of a typical galaxy in the early stages of its development in the Universe. The Sparkle Firefly galaxy even has two companion dwarf galaxies, whose role for the Milky Way is played by the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds galaxies.