Astronomers Identify Ancient Barred Spiral Galaxy

Astronomers have identified COSMOS-74706, a barred spiral galaxy that existed about 11.5 billion years ago, roughly two billion years after the Big Bang. This discovery offers new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe.

The research, led by Daniel Ivanov, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, utilized data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE) on the Keck I telescope. Their findings were presented at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 8, 2026.

Barred spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, feature a central bar structure composed of stars and gas. These bars play a significant role in galactic evolution by channeling gas toward the center, potentially fueling supermassive black holes and influencing star formation. The identification of such a structure in COSMOS-74706 suggests that massive disk galaxies were already dynamically organized at very early times.

While previous studies have reported earlier barred spiral galaxies, those analyses were less conclusive due to the methods used to measure the light's redshifts. In contrast, the age of COSMOS-74706 was confirmed using spectroscopy, providing a more definitive measurement.

This discovery contributes to our understanding of the timeline of bar formation in galaxies and offers valuable data for refining models of galactic evolution.