Milky Way-Like Galaxies in the Early Universe

23 March, 2017 / Read time: 1 minute

Astronomers, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have directly observed a pair of Milky Way-like galaxies seen as they appeared billions of years ago.

These progenitors of today’s giant spiral galaxies are surrounded by "super halos" of hydrogen gas that extend many tens-of-thousands of light-years beyond their dusty, star-filled disks.

Credits: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Neeleman, J. Xavier Prochaska, and W. M. Keck Observatory, Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF),Charles Blue (NRAO/AUI/NSF), A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF), NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Cruz deWilde and the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing and B. O'Shea, M. Norman; ESO/C. Malin.
Music: Geodesium.