Strange cosmic objects spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope may be baby 'platypus' galaxies — or something entirely new

James Webb Space Telescope image showing a broad area of space with many small galaxies, four of which are highlighted in pull-out boxes. The four highlighted galaxies are very small, appearing as points of light. Black areas of the overall image indicate where the telescope did not collect data – a vertical section in the center and a square in the lower left corner.

Strange cosmic objects spotted by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are presently puzzling astronomers. The odd observations show features of both stars and galaxies, leading to researchers referring to them as "platypuses" after the animal with a mishmash of parts. The features may provide hints to how galaxies formed billions of years ago, in the early life of the universe.

At first glance, the newfound objects look like stars, small points of light in the JWST data. Scientists found that further observation revealed more galaxy-like features, however. "If you look at any of the features separately, just putting them together makes a platypus look so odd," said Haojing Yan, an astronomer at the University of Missouri. "Our objects are exactly like that."