Hubble Details Early Galaxy Transforming Neighborhood
23 June 2026 10am Release ID: 2026-014
Researchers show that a galaxy’s young, tightly packed stars converted nearby gas from opaque to clear only 1.4 billion years after the big bang.
Astronomers have demonstrated how one galaxy that existed when the cosmos was only 1.4 billion years old transformed the gas in and around itself: Light from its young, massive, closely clustered stars blasted through opaque, electrically neutral gas, causing it to ionize and clear. This galaxy, cataloged MXDFz4.4, lived at a time when a universal event known as the Era of Reionization was wrapping up.
MXDFz4.4 is the earliest of its kind. It is the only galaxy at this distance to date that appears in a deep Hubble Space Telescope survey in a particular visible-light filter that uniquely captures the energetic light escaping from its young stars. “Hubble returned the only view that shows the galaxy’s ionizing photons — light capable of clearing the ‘fog’ in and around the galaxy,” explained Ilias Goovaerts, the first author of a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal and a postdoctoral fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.
Article link:
https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news-releases/2026/news-2026-014/
Pic Description:
Detailed visible-light images from Hubble reveal that several bursts of younger stars cleared the space in and around galaxy MXDFz4.4. Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain this transition — and Hubble has provided the first example in this time period.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ilias Goovaerts (STScI), Marc Rafelski (STScI, JHU), Anton Koekemoer (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)