James Webb Space Telescope detects five-galaxy collision

The James Webb Space Telescope has detected a collision involving five galaxies occurring when the universe was only 800 million years old. Named ‘JWST’s Quintet’, the system was identified through deep imaging in the GOODS-Sur field and confirmed via spectroscopy, proving the galaxies share the same redshift (z=6.7) and are physically clustered rather than just visually aligned.

The system, which fits within a diameter of 80,000 light-years, contains five galaxies (ELG1 to ELG5) and more than 17 stellar clumps. The combined mass is approximately 10 billion solar masses, with a star formation rate of 250 solar masses per year—roughly ten times higher than typical galaxies of that era. Researchers from Texas A&M University noted that such a crowded merger was unexpected so early in cosmic history, as previous models typically assumed much smaller-scale mergers involving only two or three galaxies.