W2246f sits 1.2 billion light years away with an old, quiet central kiloparsec and a still-star-forming disk, but MUSE found no recent collision or active nucleus to explain the galaxy’s split personality

W2246f looks calm in exactly the place astronomers expected trouble. The spiral galaxy sits about 1.2 billion light years from Earth, spans roughly 50,000 to 70,000 light years, and lies by chance in front of the far more famous WISE J224607.57−052635.0, the dust-obscured, hyperluminous galaxy at redshift 4.6. But the foreground galaxy has now become [...] The post W2246f sits 1.2 billion light years away with an old, quiet central kiloparsec and a still-star-forming disk, but MUSE found no rece