Meet Firefly Sparkle, Webb telescope’s galaxy find similar to Milky Way

Firefly Sparkle is a lightweight among the universe’s galaxy contenders seen by NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope, but the discovery is no less important than more massive galaxies because of what it has in common with our home Milky Way galaxy.

A team of scientists put Webb’s abilities to the test when the newly discovered galaxy nicknamed Firefly Sparkle was discovered and “weighed” using Webb’s data, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. 

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was actually the first to observe Firefly Sparkle within the galaxy cluster known as MACS J1423, but Webb was able to see it in greater detail, finding seven additional star clusters and identifying its two companion galaxies.

A frame split horizontally down the middle. At left is a galaxy cluster and background galaxies, showing thousands of overlapping objects at various distances. On the right side is a zoomed in view of this area. There are two smaller circular outlines flanking a larger central oval outline, labeled Firefly Sparkle galaxy. 

According to the team’s findings published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, this galaxy made up of 10 star clusters exhibits traits of a young, gas-rich galaxy in its early formation stage.

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A zoomed in view of Firefly Sparkle.

Using Webb’s images and data, the researchers determined that the Firefly Sparkle had the same mass as our Milky Way galaxy would have if it had been weighed while in formation.

The research team identified 10 star clusters within Firefly Sparkle and was able to study them individually because of gravitational lensing, a process that magnifies or bends light behind a massive object. In some areas of Webb’s image, the galaxy is magnified more than 40 times. 

“Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched, and we are not able to see the ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” said Lamiya Mowla, co-lead author of the paper with Wellesley College.

The team named the galaxy Firefly Sparkle because it appears to sparkle, like fireflies in the night.