Zhúlóng: The Most Distant Spiral Galaxy Discovered to Date | NOIRLab

Zhúlóng: The Most Distant Spiral Galaxy Discovered to Date | NOIRLab

The image of Zhúlóng, the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date. It has remarkably well-defined spiral arms, a central old bulge, and a large star-forming disk, resembling the structure of the Milky Way.

This image of Zhúlóng, the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date, shows its remarkably well-defined spiral arms, a central old bulge, and a large star-forming disk, resembling the structure of the Milky Way.

At the center of this image, placed subtly amongst the dense galactic field, is Zhúlóng, the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date. It has remarkably well-defined spiral arms, a central old bulge, and a large star-forming disk, resembling the structure of the Milky Way.

This is an image of Zhúlóng ("Torch Dragon"), the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date. The image captured light emitted just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Zhúlóng has remarkably well-defined spiral arms, a central old bulge, and a large star-forming disk, resembling the structure of the Milky Way galaxy. It looks like galaxies found in the nearby Universe and has a mass and size similar to that of the Milky Way. This is why Zhúlóng has been described as the most distant Milky Way "twin". This galaxy was discovered as part of the PANORAMIC Survey—a wide-area imaging survey being conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The project is co-led by the National Science Foundation NOIRLab assistant astronomer Christina Williams and Pascal Oesch of the University of Geneva (UNIGE).

Large, grand-design spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way are common in the nearby Universe. However, they have proven hard to find in the early Universe. This was consistent with expectations that large disks with spiral arms should take many billions of years to form. However, assistant astronomer Christina Williams of NSF NOIRLab, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has discovered a surprisingly mature spiral galaxy just one billion years after the Big Bang. This is the most distant, earliest known spiral galaxy in the Universe.

The galaxy is named Zhúlóng—meaning ‘Torch Dragon’ in Chinese mythology, a creature associated with light and cosmic time.

Credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / NASA / CSA / ESA / M. Xiao (University of Geneva) / G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute) / D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
Release Date: April 16, 2025

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