Nicknamed the “Big Wheel,” a giant, spiral-shaped disk galaxy was spotted in an unusually crowded part of the early universe just two billion years after the big bang ...

Spiral galaxies have a thin, pancake-shaped disk, with a spherical bulge at the center. Within the disk, the brightest stars trace out the characteristic spiral pattern. Elliptical galaxies are ...

A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope reveals a cosmic mirage known as an Einstein ring, where the light ...

But it appears to us (observed in optical or infrared) in projection, either as an ellipse or a spiral. We can measure the ...

Webb captured an Einstein ring formed by a distant galaxy's light bending around a closer one. This rare alignment magnifies hidden galaxies.

In the center of the Einstein ring is a lensing galaxy called an elliptical galaxy, which is smooth and shaped like an oval.