CEERS-2112

CEERS-2112 is the most distant barred spiral galaxy observed as of 2023. The light observed from the galaxy was emitted when the universe was only 2.1 billion years old. It was determined to be similar in mass to the Milky Way.

Observations
The galaxy is located in the Extended Groth Strip cosmological field and it was identified as a barred spiral galaxy thanks to the observations of the NIRCam instrument onboard the James Webb Space Telescope. These observations were made in June 2022 as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey and are publicly available for the general community.

Morphology
CEERS-2112 is a barred spiral galaxy, resembling the structure of the Milky Way. It presents a concentration of stars moving on very elliptical orbits in its central region, which appears as an elongated structure (stellar bar), from which two faint spiral arms develop. In the local Universe, about 70% of galaxies show this appearance, which is quite rare in the early Universe, where the percentage diminishes to about 5% at redshift z > 2.

Stellar mass
The galaxy has a stellar mass of 3.9 billion times that of the Sun, comparable with that of the Milky Way 11.7 billion years ago.