The James Webb Space Telescope captured a "question mark" of two galaxies in space. Photo

It's been 7 billion years since the heyday of star formation in the Universe began to slow down. What might our Milky Way galaxy have looked like at that time?

Astronomers have found clues using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. They turned out to be a cosmic question mark, which is the result of a rare alignment in the space of light years, writes NASA Science.

"We know of only three or four instances of similar gravitational lens configurations in the observable universe. This makes the finding exciting because it demonstrates the power of the Webb and suggests that we may now find more of them," says astronomer Guillaume Despres, a member of the team presenting Webb's results.

Although this area has been previously observed with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the dusty red galaxy that forms an intriguing question mark shape has only been seen by Webb. This is a result of the wavelengths of light that Hubble detects being trapped by cosmic dust, while longer wavelengths of infrared light can pass through and be detected by Webb's instruments.

The astronomers used both telescopes to observe the galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154, which acts as a magnifying glass because the cluster is so massive that it distorts the fabric of space-time. This allows astronomers to see increased detail in much more distant galaxies behind the cluster. However, the same gravitational effects that magnify galaxies also cause distortion, making galaxies appear to be smeared across the sky in arcs and even appear multiple times. These optical illusions in space are called gravitational lensing.

The red galaxy detected by Webb, along with the spiral galaxy it interacts with that Hubble had previously detected, are magnified and distorted in an unusual way that requires a special, rare alignment between the distant galaxies, the lens, and the observer - what astronomers call a hyperbolic umbilical gravitational lens. This explains the five images of the pair of galaxies that can be seen in Webb's image, four of which show the top of a question mark. The dot on the question mark is an unrelated galaxy that just happens to be in the right place and spacetime.

In addition to exploring the ability of the Webb NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) instrument to detect star formation in a galaxy billions of light-years away, the research team also couldn't resist highlighting the shape of the question mark: "It just looks cool. It's why I got into astronomy as a kid - because of these amazing images," said astronomer Marcin Sawicki, one of the lead researchers on the team.

"Both galaxies in the Question Mark pair show active star formation in a few compact regions, likely as a result of gas colliding from two galaxies. However, the shape of neither galaxy appears to be too distorted, so we are probably seeing the beginning of their interaction with each other," explained Estrada-Carpenter.

This is not the first time astronomers have seen a question mark in a galaxy. Earlier, they noticed it in the upper corner of the image of the telescope, which remains the largest and most powerful of all that have ever been launched into space.

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