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It’s very easy to become completely fascinated by these spiral galaxies. A well-defined star-filled arm leads to the presence of old star clusters and possibly active supermassive black holes. Only NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can provide highly detailed scenes of nearby galaxies in a combination of near-infrared and mid-infrared light. And a set of these images was published today.
These web images are part of the Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, a large, long-term project supported by more than 150 astronomers around the world. Before Webb took these images, PHANGS was already equipped with ultraviolet, visible, and There was an abundance of data including observations using radio waves. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared contributions provided several new pieces of the puzzle.
“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, project scientist for Strategic Initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Even for researchers who have studied the same galaxies for decades, they are surprising. The bubbles and filaments are broken down to the smallest scale ever observed and tell a story about the star formation cycle. Masu.”
Excitement quickly spread throughout the team as web images flooded in. “I feel like our team is constantly overwhelmed, in a good way, with the amount of detail in these images,” added postdoctoral researcher Thomas Williams. at Oxford University in England.
Follow the Spiral Arms
Webb’s NIRCam (near-infrared camera) captured these images of millions of stars glowing in blue hues. Some stars are spread out throughout the spiral arms, while others are clustered together as clusters.
The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) data highlights the glowing dust and shows where it exists around and among the stars. It also spotlights stars that are not yet fully formed. Like a bright red seed on the tip of a dusty mountain peak, the star is still enveloped in the gas and dust it feeds on. “These are the places where you can find the youngest and most massive stars in galaxies,” said Eric Rosolowski, a physics professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
What else surprised astronomers? Webb’s images show a large spherical shell among the gas and dust. “These holes could have been created by one or more stars exploding, leaving a huge hole in the interstellar medium,” said Adam LeRoy, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State University in Columbus. He explained.
Next, follow the spiral arms to find an extended region of gas that appears red and orange. “These structures tend to follow the same pattern in certain parts of the galaxy,” Rosolowski added. “We think of these as wave-like, and their spacing can tell us a lot about how galaxies distribute gas and dust.” Studying these structures suggests that It provides important insights into how galaxies build, maintain, and block star formation.
jump inside
Evidence shows that galaxies grow from the inside out. Star formation begins at the center of the galaxy and spreads out along the arms, spiraling from the center. The farther a star is from the center of the galaxy, the younger it is likely to be. In contrast, the region near the core visible under the blue spotlight is a population of older stars.
What happens to the center of a galaxy that is full of pink and red diffraction spikes? “This is a clear sign that an active supermassive black hole may be present,” says a researcher in Heidelberg, Germany. said Eva Schinnerer, staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. “Alternatively, the cluster towards the center could be so bright that that area of the image is saturated.”
Rich research
There are many research avenues that scientists can begin to pursue by combining PHANGS data, but the unprecedented number of stars that Webb resolved is a great place to start. “Stars can live billions or even trillions of years,” Leroy says. “By accurately cataloging all types of stars, we can build a more reliable and holistic view of their life cycles.”
In addition to immediately releasing these images, the PHANGS team also released the largest catalog to date of nearly 100,000 star clusters. “The amount of analysis that can be performed using these images is much greater than what our team can process,” Rosolowski emphasized. “We are excited to support our community so that all researchers can contribute.”
Don’t miss the images below. Webb’s image is split with an image of the same galaxy taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb unravels the mysteries of our solar system, looks to distant worlds around other stars, and explores the mysterious structure and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA and its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and Canadian Space Agency.