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Astronomers studying a cluster of still-forming protogalaxies seen as they were more than 10 billion years ago have found that a giant galaxy in the center of the cluster is forming from a surprisingly-dense soup of molecular gas. The scientists studied an object called the Spiderweb Galaxy, which actually is not yet a single galaxy but a clustering of protogalaxies more than 10 billion light-years from Earth.
At that distance, the object is seen as it was when the universe was only 3 billion years old. Pictured here is an artist's conception of the Spiderweb. In this image, the protogalaxies are shown in white and pink, and the blue indicates the location of the carbon monoxide gas in which the protogalaxies are immersed.Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser. This figure is licensed under CC BY 4.0 International License.
