Posted by Heba El-Sayed
Tuesday, February 14, 2023 03:00 AM
Data from the James Webb Space Telescope gave a glimpse into what our galaxy looked like in its formative years. Webb noticed a galaxy called The Sparkler, which resembled the Milky Way when it was young, when it had less mass and fewer globular clusters.
Our galaxy is one of the oldest galaxies in the universe, about 13.8 billion years old.
Over its lifetime, the Milky Way has grown as more and more stars form, until its current mass is about 1.5 trillion times that of the Sun, according to Digitartlends.
It also hosts about 200 globular clusters, which are dense groups of stars.
In contrast, the Sparkler galaxy contains only 3% of the mass of the Milky Way and only 24 globular clusters.
But this small galaxy is growing as it devours satellite galaxies and nearby globular clusters, and it is expected that it will eventually grow to match the mass of the Milky Way.
“It appears that we are witnessing firsthand, the assembly of this galaxy as it builds up its mass – in the form of a dwarf galaxy and several globular clusters,” lead author Duncan Forbes of Australia’s Swinburne University said in a statement. “We are excited about this opportunity to study both the formation of globular clusters, and the Milky Way, at a time when the universe was only a third of its current age.”
Sparkler is so far away that its light will take billions of years to reach us.
The researchers were able to get a better look at it using a technique called gravitational lensing, which means they see it as it was about 9 billion years ago.