Hubble Spies Galaxy’s Birth

A tiny, late-blooming galaxy -- a distorted clump of gas and stars whose development lags far behind its galactic cousins -- has been captured in new Hubble Space Telescope images.

Known as POX 186, the infant galaxy probably formed when two smaller cosmic clumps collided to create a burst of stars less than 100 million years ago, the Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement. Most larger galaxies are thought to have formed most of their stars billions of years ago.

POX 186 is minuscule, only 900 light-years across. By contrast, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.

Hubble’s pictures of POX 186 support theories that all galaxies were put together from smaller “building blocks” of gas and stars that formed soon after the theoretical Big Bang, the cosmic explosion many astronomers believe gave birth to the universe.