Leviathan's sprawling stars challenge idea that dusty giants become compact galaxies

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have confirmed a massive, dust-rich galaxy called Leviathan in the early universe. Seen when the universe was roughly 1.5 billion years old, the galaxy has its stars spread out rather than in a concentrated fashion. A paper, describing its strange stellar distribution, was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 19.