A team of Indian scientists has discovered a spiral galaxy almost from the beginning of time, challenging our present understanding of the early universe. In a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar, researchers from Pune’s National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, noted that they’ve named the galaxy ‘Alaknanda‘ after a Himalayan river. It is “one of the headstreams of the Ganga and sister river of the Mandakini, which, in turn, lends its name to the Milky Way galaxy,” the authors wrote.
Indian astronomers, using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, have discovered “Alaknanda” — a beautifully formed spiral galaxy dating back to when the universe was just 1.5 billion years old.
A proud moment for India’s growing leadership in space science and cosmic… pic.twitter.com/vRDzcPm5ZD
— Dr Jitendra Singh (@DrJitendraSingh) December 4, 2025
About the Alaknanda galaxy
The Alaknanda galaxy was discovered when the duo was studying the UNCOVER survey data of the Abell 2744 galaxy cluster collected by James Webb Space Telescope‘s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRcam). They were able to spot Alaknanda due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing caused by Abell 2744, that magnified the background galaxies up to dozens of times by bending the light emerging from them. Alaknanda was one of the galaxies in the background and its discovery wouldn’t have been possible without the lensing phenomenon.
Alaknanda has surprised scientists because it has two symmetrical spiral arms with star-forming regions appearing like “beads on a string.” This hasn’t been seen before in early galaxies. It is estimated to have been born just 1.5 billion years after the big bang (which birthed the universe around 13.8 billion years ago) and it spans about 33,000 light-years across.
According to the authors, Alaknanda has a mass 10 billion times greater than the Sun and it’s producing stars at a much higher rate than the Milky Way. The rate is estimated to be 63 Sun per year, which is strange for a galaxy so young. What’s even more surprising is that Alaknanda’s stars are only about 200 million years old, meaning this galaxy built itself rapidly in the early universe.
It is worth noting that we’re seeing Alaknanda as it was over 12 billion years ago – because that’s how long it took the light emerging from it to reach us. It’s possible that the galaxy has evolved to a great extent, grew much larger in size, merged with another galaxy or may not exist anymore. We don’t know its present state today because that would take another 12.5 billion years.
Significance of Alaknanda’s discovery
This discovery is significant because it challenges earlier theories that spiral galaxies emerged at a much later stage after the big bang. Alaknanda has proved that stable, rotating disks may have formed much earlier than once believed. It has also posited new questions about the formation of spiral galaxies – do their arm form naturally from the galaxy’s own rotation or from the gravitational pull by a small companion galaxy? The assembly of such a large disk by itself soon after the birth of the universe is currently a mystery.
The study authors say that Alaknanda will be investigated further by the Webb telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-infrared Spectrograph) instrument and the ALMA observatory to answer key questions about the galaxy’s disk rotation and whether the disk is cold and stable like modern spirals or hot and turbulent.
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