NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JVST) has for the first time captured an image that shows what our galaxy probably looked like when it formed, and it has something to do with the Christmas magic.
"I just love a glittering galaxy with Christmas lights shining like it did when the Universe was only 600 million years old," Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, told the BBC.
The picture shows ten star balls of different colors, which look like Christmas tree decorations.
This is the first time that scientists have witnessed a cluster of stars forming a galaxy like our Milky Way and have clues about how the Universe began.
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The discovery of the galaxy Firefly Sparkle represents a significant moment in our understanding of galaxy formation.
This galaxy, which looks like a swarm of fireflies, provides scientists with a unique opportunity to observe the process of galaxy formation.
While previous studies showed ready-made galaxies, Firefly Sparkle enables the study of early stages in the formation of galaxies, which is of key importance for our understanding of the evolution of the universe.
Dr. Lamija Moul from Wellesley College says that data on the early phase is very scarce, and this is the first time that we can directly observe the process of galaxy formation.
Professor Heymans, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, who is not part of the research team, described the discovery as "beautiful and scientifically important".
"It's amazing that humans have built a telescope that allows us to peer so far into the past and to be able to see these very early stages of the galaxy in such a beautiful and colorful way," he said.
According to Dr. Moul, clusters of stars are of different colors because they are in different stages of formation.
"It's wonderful because the early life of the galaxy is extremely active," she said.
"There's a lot going on, new stars are born, big stars die, there's a lot of gas and dust around them, and there's also nitrogen and oxygen, and because of the state they're in, we get those wonderful colors.
"We can estimate the age of each group, the composition of their elements and the temperatures at which they formed," she added.
When Moul first spotted the galaxy, she had never seen groups of stars in such vivid and different colors.
This made her suspect that there was something special about this system, so she checked how far away it was.
To her surprise, it turned out to be more than 13 billion light years away.
Svetlost from Firefly Sparkle galaxy comes from a time shortly after the creation of the universe and traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us.
It is so small and distant that even NASA would not be able to see it if it were not for an extremely lucky cosmic coincidence.
Between Firefly Sparkle and JVST there was a group of galaxies that picked up light from a distant galaxy and acted like a giant magnifying glass.
Astronomers call this process gravitational lensing, which in this case allowed Professor Karteika Iiera of Columbia University in New York, and other members of the team, to be privy to the incredible details of how the first galaxies like our Milky Way formed for the first time.
"This lens bends the light coming from Firefly Sparkle galaxy and amplifies it, so we can see it in wonderful detail," he told the BBC.
"Our reconstruction shows that groups of actively forming stars are surrounded by light from other stars. This galaxy is literally in the process of being put together."
"Being able to see this incredibly distant galaxy evokes a magical feeling in us," he concluded.
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