The James Webb Telescope has done its job again. NASA just released a set 19 images of nearby spiral galaxies, the result of a data collection program involving 150 astronomers from around the world. They are works of art in themselves. But they also offer new clues about star formation, structure and galactic evolution.
The work is carried out within the framework of the Physics with High Angular Resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) program. Several large astronomical observatories around the world are involved in the project. The new images were captured by the James Webb Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
With these images, the team also published the largest catalog of star clusters to date: in total approximately 100 000. “The new James Webb images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, a project scientist with the Strategic Initiatives Project at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “They capture the imagination of even researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades,” Lee said in a statement.
Scientists, thanks to this material, have achieved first determined the structure of clouds of dust and gas from which stars and planets are formed.. NASA says euphoria swept over the entire team when they received the final results of the images. “I feel like we live in a constant state of positive surprise at the amount of detail in these images,” added Thomas Williams, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
James Webb teamed up with Hubble
FANGS also includes images and data from other telescopes in this galaxy collection. Among them is the Hubble telescope, the older brother of the James Webb, launched into orbit in 1990.. Their combined technology made it possible to achieve this level of detail.
“Using Hubble, we could see the starlight from the galaxies, but some of the light was blocked by the galaxies’ dust,” said astronomer Eric Rozolowsky of the University of Alberta. But “using James Webb’s infrared vision, we can see stars behind and within the surrounding dust.”
The closest of the 19 captured galaxies is called NGK 5068: It’s about 15 million light years from our planet. And the farthest of the group NGK 1365, approximately 60 million light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in one year: about 9.5 trillion kilometers.
James Webb’s images also show stars that have not yet fully formed. The team explains that they are still surrounded by gas and dust, which helps them grow. In photographs they can be seen as bright red seeds at the tips of dusty ears. “Here we can find the newest and most massive stars in galaxies,” said Eric Rozolowsky, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
The James Webb Telescope is the world’s largest space science observatory. It was launched in 2021 and began operations in 2022. This is an international program led by NASA in conjunction with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
Source: Hiper Textual
