{"id":203148,"date":"2025-01-05T12:28:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/newfound-galaxy-gives-glimpse-into-the-milky-ways-past"},"modified":"2025-01-05T12:28:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:28:51","slug":"newfound-galaxy-gives-glimpse-into-the-milky-ways-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/newfound-galaxy-gives-glimpse-into-the-milky-ways-past","title":{"rendered":"Newfound galaxy gives glimpse into the Milky Way\u2019s past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/newfound-galaxy-gives-glimpse-into-the-milky-ways-past2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Firefly Sparkle was previously imaged by Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory, but was followed-up using the power of both gravitational lensing and multi-wavelength data from JWST\u2019s CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS). The role of the lens was played by the massive galaxy cluster called MACS J1423.8 + 2,404, which lies between us and the Firefly Sparkle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout the benefit of this gravitational lens, we would not be able to resolve this galaxy,\u201d said Kartheik Iyer, a co-lead author of the paper, in a press release. \u201cWe knew to expect it based on current physics, but it\u2019s surprising that we actually saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the team\u2019s paper, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-08293-0\"><em>Nature<\/em><\/a> on Dec. 11, they created a model to \u201cundo\u201d the visual distortions of the lensing. It turns out that the Firefly Sparkle\u2019s original form appears like a stretched raindrop; its stars have not yet settled into either the central bulge or a thin disk. In other words, the galaxy is still very much in the process of forming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Firefly Sparkle was previously imaged by Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory, but was followed-up using the power of both gravitational lensing and multi-wavelength data from JWST\u2019s CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS). The role of the lens was played by the massive galaxy cluster called MACS J1423.8 + 2,404, which lies between us [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}