Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in a galaxy’s evolution.
This finding helps astronomers get a better handle on when such bars could have first emerged in the universe. Analysis of light from the galaxy, called COSMOS-74706, places it on the cosmic timeline at about 11.5 billion years ago.
“This galaxy was developing bars 2 billion years after the birth of the universe," Ivanov said. “Two billion years after the big bang.”
The findings were presented at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 8.
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