breadsticks tagged posts

Webb data suggest many Early Galaxies were Long and Thin, not Disk-like or Spherical

Sample shapes of distant galaxies identified by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey.
Sample shapes of distant galaxies identified by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. [(Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin)]

Columbia researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like breadsticks—and are rarely round, like balls of pizza dough.

“Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University and the lead author of a new paper slated to appear in The Astrophysical Journal that outlines the findings...

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