NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has made an incredible discovery: a young galaxy from the early universe, aptly named Firefly Sparkle. This galaxy, with its dazzling star clusters, resembles bioluminescent fireflies, offering astronomers a rare opportunity to peer into the Milky Way’s infancy.
The galaxy is still in the process of formation and dates back to when the universe was just 600 million years old—roughly 5% of its current age. This discovery provides insight into what the Milky Way might have looked like in its early stages. The galaxy, with a mass equivalent to around 10 million stars like our Sun, is surrounded by two smaller galaxies, Firefly-Best Friend and Firefly-New Best Friend.
Firefly Sparkle features 10 tightly packed star clusters arranged in a diffuse arc of stars. Eight of these clusters are located at the center, while two are spread across its extended arm. The galaxy spans about 1,000 light-years in visible size—approximately 5.9 trillion miles per light-year. Remarkably, the galaxy is thought to have started forming between 100 to 400 million years before the moment captured by Webb, making it one of the earliest galaxies we can observe.
Dr. Lamiya Mowla, a lead researcher and astronomer at Wellesley College and the Center for Astronomy, Space Science, and Astrophysics, explains that the Milky Way likely began to take shape around the same time as Firefly Sparkle. This observation provides a direct look at what early galaxies, like our own, may have been like. “This galaxy’s mass is what we’d expect for a Milky Way ancestor at that stage in the universe’s history,” she said. At that time, Firefly Sparkle was around 10,000 times smaller than today’s Milky Way—a typical characteristic of galaxies from that era.
So, why the name Firefly Sparkle? “A group of fireflies is called a sparkle, and that’s what this galaxy looks like—a sparkle of stars,” Mowla added.
Located about 6,500 light-years from its neighbor Firefly-Best Friend and 42,000 light-years from Firefly-New Best Friend, Firefly Sparkle is a tiny speck compared to the Milky Way. Today, our galaxy stretches across 100,000 light-years, and it grew over billions of years by merging with other galaxies and forming new stars. In contrast, Firefly Sparkle is still in its early formative stages.
Astronomer Kartheik Iyer, co-lead author and NASA Hubble Fellow, explains that galaxies like Firefly Sparkle likely formed by the collapse of dense gas clouds in the young universe. “Stars formed under intense pressure and density, creating massive clusters that later merged or grew over time,” Iyer said.
What’s fascinating is that the star clusters in Firefly Sparkle aren’t all the same age. Some clusters are younger and appear blue, while others are older and more red. This variation indicates that the galaxy’s star formation process is ongoing, offering a snapshot of how galaxies evolve in the earliest stages of the universe.
This discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope offers a thrilling glimpse into the distant past, revealing the fundamental processes that shaped galaxies like our own.
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