Overview
- Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar of NCRA‑TIFR report the discovery in Astronomy & Astrophysics, identifying the galaxy as a grand‑design spiral.
- Alaknanda spans roughly 30,000 light‑years, holds about 10 billion solar masses in stars, and forms new stars at about 60 solar masses per year.
- JWST imaging across 21 filters from the UNCOVER and MegaScience surveys, boosted by gravitational lensing from the Abell 2744 cluster, enabled the detailed morphology.
- The galaxy shows two symmetric spiral arms and a bright central bulge, with analyses indicating roughly half its stellar mass formed in about 200 million years.
- Planned spectroscopy with JWST NIRSpec or ALMA will measure rotation and internal kinematics to test whether the disk is dynamically cold or turbulent and to probe how its spiral arms arose.