Space is filled with galaxies—huge groups of stars, dust, and gas, held together by gravity.
Some galaxies are busy with star-making activities, while others are more quiet, with little to no star formation going on. These quiet galaxies are known as “quiescent” galaxies.
Scientists from all around the world have spotted a new, quiet galaxy.
The name they’ve given it is a bit of a mouthful—JADES-GS+53.12365-27.80454, but let’s call it “Jade” for short. Jade is special because it’s one of the lightest, far-off quiet galaxies that we’ve ever found.
A team of scientists, led by a chap named Lester Sandles from the University of Cambridge in the UK, spotted Jade.
They used a fancy piece of equipment called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST is part of an in-depth study named the JADES survey, looking deep into space.
The Details of Jade
Now, let’s talk a bit about Jade itself. Jade is light, even for a galaxy. It weighs only 950 million times the weight of our sun, which might sound a lot, but is actually quite small for a galaxy.
Moreover, it has been quiet for a very long time—about 600 million years. This means it hasn’t been forming any new stars for that long. The stars that are there are pretty old, between 0.8 and 1.7 billion years.
One interesting thing the team found out about Jade is that it’s built a bit differently than other galaxies like it, which are far off but heavier. This might mean it had a different journey of growth.
Around the time when Jade’s star-making activities came to a halt, there were lots of other galaxies near it. Three of these were big and old, and one was very close to Jade.
So, why did Jade stop making stars? The scientists believe its neighborhood might have had something to do with it. Maybe the nearby galaxies affected Jade in a way that caused it to stop forming stars.
The finding of Jade is exciting for the scientists. It’s possibly the earliest case they’ve seen where a galaxy’s surroundings might have made it stop making stars. This discovery can help them understand more about how galaxies change over time.
What happens next?
For now, the scientists want to study Jade more, and other galaxies like it. They plan to use other space surveys to get a better understanding of what caused Jade to stop making stars and learn more about its past.
Studying galaxies like Jade isn’t just about that one galaxy. It’s about fitting together the pieces of a much larger puzzle—the story of how galaxies change and evolve over billions of years. And who knows?
In this grand story, even our own galaxy, the Milky Way, might have had a quiet period like Jade.
The study was published in arXiv.
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