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The James Webb Space Telescope captured 19 brilliant images. spiral galaxy And observe the millions of stars that call them home in unprecedented detail never before seen by astronomers.
Webb’s unique ability to observe the universe in different wavelengths of infrared light, including near-infrared and mid-infrared, reveals the stars, gas, and dust within each galaxy’s complex structure.
Astronomers believe that Approximately 60% Spiral galaxies are the most common of all galaxies, and our solar system resides in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Webb’s observations will help astronomers better understand star formation and the evolution of spiral galaxies like ours.
Viewed head-on, each galaxy in the new image has spiral arms packed with stars. At the center of each galaxy is a cluster of old stars or stars. supermassive black hole.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken images of 19 spiral galaxies in near- and mid-infrared light.
The observations were made as part of PHANGS. Physics at high angular resolution at nearby GalaxieS, project. More than 100 astronomers from around the world are participating in the program, which also examines data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Space Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s MUSE instrument, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array in Chile. There is.
Data from a variety of telescopes allows astronomers to make observations across a variety of wavelengths of visible light, ultraviolet light, and radio waves. Adding Webb’s infrared insights will help address some of the observational gaps.
“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” Janice Lee, a PHANGS core member and project scientist for new missions and strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement. “Even for researchers who have been studying these galaxies for decades, they are surprising. The bubbles and filaments have been resolved to the smallest scale ever observed and tell a story about the star formation cycle. Tell you.”
Astronomers used Webb’s near-infrared camera to observe millions of bright, blue-looking stars clustered together and spread across 19 galactic arms. Meanwhile, Webb’s mid-infrared instrument spotlights the still-forming red star, trapped in the glowing dust around the star and the very gas and dust that helps it grow.
“These are the places where we can find the youngest and most massive stars in galaxies,” PHANGS core member Eric Rosolowski, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, said in a statement.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
This image shows both Webb (top left) and Hubble (bottom right) observations of galaxy NGC 4254.
In Webb’s image, the spiral arms are virtually incandescent with orange and red gas. These images will help astronomers determine the distribution of gas and dust within spiral galaxies and how galaxies promote and stop star formation.
“These structures tend to follow the same pattern in certain parts of the galaxy,” Rosolowski said. “We think of these as wave-like, and their spacing can tell us a lot about how galaxies distribute gas and dust.”
Webb also captured large spherical voids between the galaxy’s gas and dust, thought to have been formed by exploding stars.
“These holes could have been created by one or more stars exploding and digging a huge hole in the interstellar medium,” said PHANGS lead member and professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. astronomy professor Adam LeRoy said in a statement.
Astronomers believe that galaxies form from the inside out. Star formation begins at the center of the galaxy and then spirals out along the arms. In other words, a star’s distance from the center of the galaxy is proportional to its age, so younger stars are more likely to be farther from the center of the galaxy. Groups of blue stars near the center of each galaxy indicate older stars.
On the other hand, some galaxies have pinkish-red spikes near their centers.
“This is a clear sign that active supermassive black holes may exist,” said PHANGS core member and staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. said Eva Schineller in a statement. “Alternatively, the cluster towards the center could be so bright that that area of the image is saturated.”
LeRoy said scientists are most excited about studying the huge number of stars revealed by Webb’s new images.
“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.”