The nature of giant clumps in distant galaxies probed by the anatomy of the Cosmic Snake

Understand

Giant stellar clumps are ubiquitous in high-redshift galaxies.

• They are thought to play an important role in the build-up of galactic bulges and as diagnostics of star formation feedback in galactic discs.
• Hubble Space Telescope (HST) blank field imaging surveys have estimated that these clumps have masses up to 10$^{9.5}$ M$_{\odot}$ and linear sizes larger than ~1 kpc.
• Recently, gravitational lensing has also been used to get higher spatial resolution.