Telescope James Webb yet again producing clear photos of galaxies in the universe. Telescope belonging to the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has just released a clear photo of the Cartwheel Galaxy with never-before-seen detail.
Launch Live Science, photos from the telescope were released on Tuesday (2/8). The photo is also expected to clarify human understanding of the galaxy which is shaped like a wagon wheel.
“It looks like the wheel of a wagon. It is the result of an intensive event – a very fast collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy that is not visible in this photo,” said a NASA representative.
ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO RESUME CONTENT
–
In the released photo, you can see a wheel-shaped galaxy accompanied by two smaller spiral galaxies. But before taking this shape, the wheel galaxy was also a spiral.
Citing the official site NASAThe Wheel Galaxy is located 500 million light-years away in the Scluptor Constellation. The galaxy has two colorful rings.
The two rings spread out from the center of the collision, like splashes of water that had just been thrown by a stone. For this reason, some astronomers call these galaxies ‘ring galaxies.
The center point of the Wheel Galaxy contains an incredible amount of hot dust, with the brightest areas being home to large clusters of young stars. On the other hand, the outer ring, which has been expanding for 440 million years, is dominated by star formation and supernovae.
The Wheel Galaxy has also been previously photographed by the Hubble Telescope. However, James Webb’s more sophisticated camera capabilities make the Wheel Galaxy photo more detailed and clear.
The James Webb telescope is known to have a NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). The camera looks at near-infrared distances from 0.6 to 5 microns, which allows it to see crucial light waves that allow it to see more stars than ordinary light does.
This is because young stars, which form in the outer ring, are less obscured by the dust around them when observed using infrared light.
In this photo by James Webb, the NIRCam data is colored blue, orange, and yellow. The Wheel Galaxy shows many blue dots, which are individual stars or clusters of star formations.
NirCam also revealed differences between the soft distribution or shape of the older stellar population and dense debut at the core, and the grass-like shape commonly associated with younger stellar populations.
Near-infrared itself is a group of infrared light that is closest to light waves that can be seen with the human naked eye. Near-infrared is in contrast to far infrared which is closer to the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
(lth/lth)
–
