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Space

Bizarre galaxy in the early universe died extremely young

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a distant galaxy stopped forming stars extraordinarily fast, making it the furthest dead galaxy ever spotted

By Leah Crane

6 March 2024

The James Webb Space Telescope can capture detailed images of distant galaxies

JADES Collaboration

A strange galaxy in the early universe lived fast and died young. It is the most distant “dead” galaxy, meaning it is no longer forming any new stars, ever spotted.

The galaxy JADES-GS+53.15508-27.80178 was discovered in 2010, but astronomers at the time were not able to characterise it in detail. Francesco D’Eugenio at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues observed it again with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and found that its star formation seems to have been quenched.

This is unusual…

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