A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3.

ABSTRACT: The majority of massive disk galaxies in the local Universe show a stellar barred structure in their central regions, including our Milky Way^1,2. Bars are supposed to develop in dynamically cold stellar disks at low redshift, as the strong gas turbulence typical of disk galaxies at high redshift suppresses or delays bar formation^3,4. Moreover, simulations predict bars to be almost absent beyond z = 1.5 in the progenitors of Milky Way-like galaxies^5,6. Here we report observations of ceers-2112, a barred spiral galaxy at redshift z_phot ≈ 3, which was already mature when the Universe was only 2 Gyr old. The stellar mass (M_★ = 3.9 × 10⁹M_⊙) and barred morphology mean that ceers-2112 can be considered a progenitor of t

SUBMITTER: Costantin L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10651483 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature