Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2024

42 MARCH-APRIL 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York. “Galaxies that look like pool noodles or surf- boards seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surpris- ing, since they are uncommon nearby.” The team focused on a vast field of near-infrared images deliv- ered by Webb, known as the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, plucking out galax- ies that are estimated to exist when the universe was 600 million to 6 billion years old. While most distant galaxies look like surfboards and pool noodles, others are shaped like frisbees and volley- balls. The “volleyballs,” or sphere- shaped galaxies, appear the most compact type on the cosmic “ocean” and were also the least frequently identified. The frisbees were found by NASA/ESA/CSA − Claire Blome & Christine Pulliam R esearchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” ex- plained lead author Viraj Pandya, a Distant galaxies have flattened oval disk and tube-like shapes T hese images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope using the NIRCam instru- ment. Several filters were used to sample wide wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. [NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin)]