The newly discovered galaxy GS-NDG-9422 (9422) appeared about a billion years after the Big Bang and is distinguished by a strange light signal never seen before, indicating that its gas appears brighter than its stars.

According to the researchers, this “brand new phenomenon” is of great importance because it may be the missing link in galactic evolution between the first stars in the universe and well-formed ordinary galaxies. Its discovery became known from a scientific article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“My first thought when looking at the spectrum of the galaxy was, ‘This is amazing.’ This is what the Webb telescope was created for: completely new phenomena in the early universe that will help us understand how cosmic history began,” says lead researcher Dr. Alex Cameron from the University of Oxford.

To discuss the strange data, Cameron turned to fellow theorist Dr. Harley Katz. Together, their team found that computer models of cosmic gas clouds heated by very hot massive stars to the point that the gas glows brighter than the stars match Webb’s observations almost exactly.

“It seems that these stars should be much hotter and more massive than what we see in the local universe, which makes sense because the early universe was very different,” says Katz of Oxford and the University of Chicago.

In the local Universe, typical hot and massive stars have temperatures between 40,000 and 50,000 °C. According to the team, galaxy 9422 has stars whose temperature exceeds 80,000°C.

The researchers suggest that the galaxy is in the middle of a brief phase of intense star formation within a cloud of dense gas that is producing a large number of massive, hot stars. So many photons of light from the stars enter the gas cloud that it glows very brightly.

In addition to its novelty, the nebulous gas obscuring the stars is also intriguing because it is predicted to be among the first generation of stars in the universe, which astronomers classify as population III stars.

“We know that there are no population III stars in this galaxy because the Webb data show too complex a chemical composition. However, its stars are different from those we are familiar with – the exotic stars in this galaxy could provide a guide to understanding how galaxies transitioned from primordial stars to the types of galaxies we already know,” says Katz.