In the universe, every star is a hope for a new life and shelter. Now, James Webb Space Telescope has found a galaxy just like the Milky Way, it is located 9 billion light years away from Earth.
Named ‘Sparker’, the galaxy is located in the southern constellation Volens. The galaxy was named Sparkler because it is surrounded by around two dozen shining globular clusters orbiting around it. Each of these clusters could contain around a million stars. Our galaxy currently hosts around 200 globular clusters of its own, reported Space.com.
The James Webb telescope view shows Sparkler as it looked when the Universe was only four billion years old or about a third of the Universe’s present age. According to the Science Alert report, if the newly discovered galaxy grows at the same rate that it should grow the same way the Milky Way did in about 9 billion years.
The investigation of this galaxy will provide astronomers with a unique insight into how the Milky way has evolved.
The findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The new galaxy is just 3 per cent the mass of the Milky Way, but astronomers expect that it will grow through the feeding process over cosmic timescales to will eventually match the mass of the Milky Way.
The research was led by Professor Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University in Australia and Professor Aaron Romanowsky of San Jose State University in the USA.
“We appear to be witnessing, first hand, the assembly of this galaxy as it builds up its mass in the form of a dwarf galaxy and several globular clusters,” Professor Forbes said in a statement. “We are excited by this unique opportunity to study both the formation of globular clusters and an infant Milky Way, at a time when the Universe was only 1/3 of its present age.”
Co-author Professor Aaron Romanowsky comments, “The origin of globular clusters is a long-standing mystery, and we are thrilled that JWST can look back in time to see them in their youth”.
