Baby monster galaxy spotted in the early Universe

Artist's impression of a young, growing elliptical galaxy's rapid star formation.

NASA, Z. Levay, G. Bacon (STScI)

Eleven billion years ago, when the Universe was half the Earth's present age, massive galaxies had already begun to form, planting the seeds for the present-day Universe. According to current models, the dense cores of massive elliptical galaxies formed first, within which there were regions of intense star formation. By looking at distant objects, we should be able to see evidence of this process. Until now, however, we had not seen anything that looked definitively like the formation of a galaxy core. But a newly discovered object, GOODS-N-774 (nicknamed “Sparky”), may be the first glimpse of exactly that.

The researchers used data from the Hubble Space Telescope, obtained as part of the CANDELS survey, as well as the Herschel Space Observatory and the W.M. Keck Observatory, to study Sparky, which has about 150 billion (1.5 x 10^11) times the mass of the Sun (solar masses), of which 100 billion is in the form of stars.

GOODS-N-774, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright orange object near the center is Sparky.

NASA, ESA, and E. Nelson (Yale University, USA)

Scientists still aren’t sure why galaxies like Sparky haven’t been observed before. While there’s a good chance that they are very rare, the authors of the study suggest that many similar star-forming cores may be obscured by gas and dust. If that’s the case, visible-light and near-infrared telescopes could be missing them.