Astronomers have discovered a big discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope: an unusual system of at least five galaxies that are on a collision course in the early universe, barely 800 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery is incredibly important because most known galaxy mergers only involve two galaxies. The scientists have given the system the name “JWST’s Quintet.”
A Look at a Cluster from the Early Universe
Live Science says that these galaxies are “emission-line galaxies,” which means that they are quickly making new stars. The JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) took a picture of a huge halo of gas around the cluster. This suggests that the galaxies are interacting with each other and are part of a single, linked system.
Some of the galaxies are only 43,300 light-years apart, which is very close. The fact that they are so close together strongly suggests that they will combine, which would eventually create one huge galaxy.
Understanding how galaxies change throughout time
The new system looks a lot like Stephan’s Quintet, which is a group of galaxies that are merging in the cosmos close by. But JWST’s Quintet is much younger and more “fertile,” making new stars at an incredibly fast rate. Astronomers also found “plank bridges,” which are indicators of the tidal forces and gravitational interactions that happen when two galaxies combine.
The total mass of the stars in JWST’s Quintet is thought to be 10 billion solar masses. Scientists think that this system will probably turn into a “quiescent” galaxy, which means it won’t be forming stars, about 1 billion to 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. This discovery might help solve a big mystery in astronomy: why some of the universe’s oldest galaxies stopped making stars considerably earlier than scientists thought they would.
Astronomers are currently making plans to use the JWST to look at the system again in the future to learn more about it. They want to learn more about how often galaxy mergers happened in the early cosmos and how galaxies expanded and changed by finding more of them.