Discovery of Ancient Spiral Galaxy Alaknanda by NCRA-TIFR

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune has discovered the spiral galaxy ‘Alaknanda.’ This galaxy existed when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old.

• Indian researchers have discovered a very large galaxy that existed when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old. The galaxy discovered by the researchers is a well-defined spiral galaxy, which closely resembles the structure of our own Milky Way — a type of galaxy believed to have formed much later. 
• Announcing this discovery on 2 December 2025, Professor Yogesh Wadadekar of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune said, “We have named it Alaknanda after the Himalayan river.” 
• He said Alaknanda is a spiral galaxy located about 12 billion light-years away, and it has a distinctive grand-design spiral structure similar to our galaxy, the Milky Way.

About Alaknanda

• Its most special feature is its textbook spiral structure. The galaxy has two well-formed spiral arms wrapped around a bright central bulge, with a diameter of about 30,000 light-years. 
• According to the current understanding of scientists, the earliest galaxies did not have well-formed structures; they were messy and clumpy, very hot and turbulent. But Alaknanda is not like that at all. 
• This discovery was made using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful observation equipment ever sent into space. 
• The galaxy has two well-formed spiral arms wrapped around a bright central bulge, with a diameter of about 30,000 light-years.

About spiral galaxies

• These galaxies look like large rotating pinwheels, with pancake-like discs of stars and a central bulge or dense crowd of stars. 
• Spiral galaxies are surrounded by a halo containing a mixture of old stars, star clusters, and dark matter — a type of invisible material that does not emit or reflect light but still has a gravitational pull on other matter.

James Webb Space Telescope:

• This telescope is the result of an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency, and it was launched in December 2021.
• It is currently positioned at a point in space known as the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, located about 1.5 million km from Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Lagrange Point 2 is one of the five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system where the gravitational forces of the two large bodies balance each other. 
• Named after the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, these points exist between any two orbiting bodies where their gravitational forces balance each other. 
• It is the largest and most powerful infrared space telescope ever built. It is the successor to the Hubble Telescope.