A new galaxy has been discovered with some of the oldest stars in the universe ever discovered. A new telescope named the James Webb Space Telescope has debuted taking a “Deep Field” image. The image has beautiful colors and truly represents endless space and time. Scientists used the data from the image to try to identify a strange, ancient, and fascinating object found in space.

The Sparkler is a recently discovered global cluster that lies about nine billion light-years away from us. Its light, which has only reached us now, began 4.5 billion years after the big bang, just after stars could form. The Sparkler got its name from the discovered compact objects, which appeared as small, red, and yellow dots surrounding it. The researchers referred to these points as “flickers”, but it turned out that it was in fact a globular cluster.

High-resolution snapshots of the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) have thousands of diverse galaxies with dense clusters of millions of stars. The most interesting stars were those from a collection of a galaxy’s childhood, which contain new information and clues about its early stages of formation and growth.

“Watching the first images from JWST and discovering ancient globular clusters around distant galaxies was an incredible moment, one that was not possible with previous Hubble Space Telescope imagery,” said Dr Kartheik Iyer, a researcher for NASA.

After reviewing images from the telescope, NASA administrator Bill Nelson claimed that its deep field did not contain enough galaxy; he compared it to holding a grain of sand on your finger, extending your hand and arms, and then measuring the grain of sand skyward.

“Because we were able to observe the sparks over a range of wavelengths, we were able to model them and better understand their physical properties, such as their age and the number of stars they contain,” said Dr Iyer.

About 150 globular clusters are found in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Astrophysical Journal Letters shed light on when and how these letters formed. They are all extremely old (over billions of years) and scientists find it extremely difficult to determine their age.

“These newly identified clusters formed near the first time it was even possible to form stars… We are observing the Sparkler as it was nine billion years ago, when the universe was no longer was only four and a half billion years old, looking at something that happened a long time ago,” said Dr Lamiya Mowla.

The scientists found three different images of the Sparkler in total, using different wavelengths, including spectrographic and infrared. Guessing the age of a star is nowhere near as easy as guessing the age of a human. It will take some time for these researchers to work out these details.

The sparks that were ignited by the Sparkler were revealed to be extraordinarily old, using spectroscopy (the examination of light). Scientists and researchers have not looked at oxygen emissions with measurable spectra emitted from more young clusters that are still forming stars.

The Hubble Telescope could barely see the Sparkler, the JWST magnified its snapshots by 100, thanks to gravitational lensing which is an effect that distorts what lies behind a cluster of galaxies in the foreground. You can think of it as a giant magnifying glass. Using the JWST telescope and its new technologies and techniques, it produced three separate images of the globular cluster, allowing astronomers to examine and study them.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is known to have around 150 globular stars, but no one yet knows exactly how and when exactly these thick, dense stars formed. Researchers and astronomers know that globular clusters can be extremely old, which makes calculating their age extremely difficult. Using very distant globular clusters to date some of the earliest stars in distant galaxies had never been done before until the creation of the JWST.

“The discovery of these new stars will definitely contribute to future science researches and will advance future student astronomers.” says Clarke.