Posted on 12/30/2024 12:30:02 PM PST by Red Badger
The distant galaxy has all the structure of a modern spiral galaxy (the object next to it is another galaxy in the foreground).
Image credit: Xiao et al., arXiv 2024 (CC BY 4.0)
It has been just over three years since JWST was launched into space and in that time, the telescope has dramatically expanded our understanding of the distant universe. Among the important findings is the discovery of very young galaxies that already looked like their more senior counterparts in the local universe, and a recent study has shown a spiral galaxy that already had everything modern ones do just 1.13 billion years after the Big Bang.
The galaxy has been nicknamed Zhúlóng, which means "Torch Dragon". It is a spiral galaxy like our own, the Milky Way. Zhúlóng also shows a clear division between its central concentration of stars, known as the bulge, and the disk where the spiral arms are located. As reported in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper, this is the most distant galaxy with a bulge, disk, and spiral arms known to date.
The bulge is believed to form first and for that reason, it has the older stars. Over time, the disk grows and the spiral arms form creating what we recognize and classify as a spiral galaxy. The observations of Zhúlóng show a clear distinction between the bulge and the disk – but that’s not all. The galaxy is also massive, weighing around 100 billion times our Sun (roughly what the Milky Way weighs today) having had over 13 billion years to grow.
With this discovery, JWST demonstrates that the process of formation and evolution of spiral galaxies can happen in as little as a billion years, even though it likely took many other galaxies billions of years to get as big and with a morphology like the more modern spiral galaxies. Zhúlóng is forming stars at an impressive rate, much more prolific than our own galaxy. However, compared to similar massive galaxies at that time, it is pretty quiet.
Galaxies also grow through collisions with small and big galaxies. These mergers were a lot more common back in the past when the universe was denser. Still, it does not seem like the galaxy is undergoing anything like that now. If it had had mergers, the events would have been much quicker than they are today, leading to very efficient growth.
“How a morphologically mature galaxy that resembles nearby massive spirals can form in this environment remains an open question, but the discovery of this source is a first step and provides an important constraint on galaxy formation models,” the authors wrote in the paper.
The existence of Zhúlóng adds to the growing evidence that the way galaxies are born and grow in the formative years of the cosmos is far from understood. Even among massive galaxies from the time, Zhúlóng stands out. Maybe there is more than one way to build a big galaxy, or maybe there are slow and fast ways to build spirals.
The team is planning to follow up with JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to understand this galaxy better, as well as to continue to discover more galaxy morphologies at these great distances from us.
The study has been posted to the preprint server arXiv and is yet to be peer-reviewed.
Save this headline...We can use it again.................
“Bob”
Al...............
Astronomy books in the future will be forever defined as before JWST and after JWST.
Zhúlóng? Why? It’s Chinese and from Chinese mythology. Why pick this name?
Good question.................
I find all the JWST data fascinating. It has shattered the age/size/assumptions of the universe. A a full fledge creation believer, God set everything in motion for a reason. Some of it is just to humble us in our beliefs that try to explain away Gods creation.
I can still be amazed at his ability to create complexity and a few head fakes. It’s all amazing and glorious.
Ok.
“WHY???” does it have a chinese name!!!
I should have scrolled.
Same question in my comment.
So that a billion years later you can name it again.............
A day is as a thousand years and thousand years is as a day...............
Looks like a torch turtle.
😂👍
I agree, should have named it Gamera instead.
To continue from the Zhulong aka Zhuyin wiki page...
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The Classic of Mountains and Seas (c. 3rd century BCE - 1st century CE) records parallel myths about Zhuyin and Zhulong.
“The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: The North” section (8) describes Zhuyin on Bell Mountain 鍾山, Zhōngshān):
The deity of Mount Bell is named Torch Shade. When this deity’s eyes look out there is daylight, and when he shuts his eyes there is night. When he blows it is winter, and when he calls out it is summer. He neither drinks, nor eats, nor breathes. If this god does breathe, there are gales. His body is a thousand leagues long. Torch Shade is east of the country of Nolegcalf, which “lies East of Longtigh country”. Nolegcalf “people have no calves on their legs”.[4][citation needed] He has a human face and a snake’s body, and he is scarlet in colour. The god lives on the lower slopes of Mount Bell.[2]
<<<
Mount Bell is this place (sorry the auto links went wonky, I don’t have time to format right now):
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Purple Mountain is a mountain related to many historical events of both ancient and modern China. It was originally known as Bell Mountain...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Mountain_(Nanjing)
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I thought it worth mentioning because the recent comet was discovered there (🤔 9 January 2023) and named for the Purple Mountain Observatory:
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C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is a comet from the Oort cloud discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China on 9 January 2023 and independently found by ATLAS South Africa on 22 February 2023. The comet passed perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million mi) on 27 September 2024,[1][4] when it became visible to the naked eye.[7][8][9] Tsuchinshan-ATLAS peaked its brightest magnitude on 9 October, shortly after passing the Sun, with a magnitude of −4.9 per reported observations at the Comet Observation Database (COBS).[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2023_A3_(Tsuchinshan%E2%80%93ATLAS)
“Bob” works for me. Yell “Hi, Bob!” at it and see if it answers up. In 26 billion years. You gotta be patient with this sort of thing.
Astronomers believe in dragons! Said Joy Behar.
MEANWHILE-—THE DRONES OVER NEW JERSEY, et Al, CANNOT BE EXPLAINED
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