♦ Indian scientists have discovered an ancient spiral galaxy named Alaknanda. The galaxy was formed when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old, i.e, 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Notably, the 13.8-billion-year-old galaxy resembles the Milky Way.

♦ A team from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, led by Professor Yogesh Wadadekar and PhD student Rashi Jain, spotted Alaknanda using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy lies 12 billion light-years away, behind the massive Abell 2744 cluster, whose gravitational lensing magnified its light for detailed imaging across multiple wavelengths. Abell 2744 is a massive galaxy cluster which is also known as Pandora's Cluster.

♦ They named this galaxy Alaknanda, a Himalayan river, one of the headstreams of the Ganga and sister river of the Mandakini, which, in turn, lends its name to the Milky Way galaxy