Big Wheel galaxy

The Big Wheel galaxy is a giant spiral galaxy that existed at least as far back as 2 billion years after the Big Bang. It was accidentally discovered in 2024 in an image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope while exploring a nearby quasar. The galaxy is 12 billion light years away in the constellation Phoenix. This disk galaxy is much bigger than the other galaxies back then. This seems to challenge current models of galaxy growth in the early universe. The authors who made the discovery say that it "suggests the presence of favourable physical conditions for large-disk formation in dense environments in the early Universe".

In 2022 to 2023, research conducted by the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer onboard the Chandra X-Ray Observatory concluded that this galaxy is a Seyfert galaxy because it has an Active Galactic Nucleus.