Recently released James Webb Space Telescope images of 19 distant galaxies shed an entirely new, dynamic and vibrant light on these magnificent realms. The trove of cosmic portraits taken by this $10 billion telescope reveal highly detailed and quite breathtaking front views of the spirals seen from the instrument’s vantage point in space.
These JWST images were particularly exciting to astronomers as they were delivered because they highlighted that no two galaxies are the same when viewed with the kind of precision that JWST can offer.
The observations, which are part of the Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) program, provide astronomers with clues about how spiral galaxies like the Milky Way form stars, by specifically highlighting the gas and dust structures in these galaxies.
“The new images from JWST are extraordinary,” Janice Lee, project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement. “They are mind-blowing, even for researchers who have been studying the same galaxies for decades. The bubbles and filaments resolve to the smallest scales ever observed and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”
Relating to: Nearby star factory shines in stunning photo from James Webb Space Telescope
The images show bright orange dust lanes taken by JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
The same instrument also captured stars that were still forming, covered in envelopes of gas and dust in which they accumulated mass. These envelopes can be seen as red “seeds” at the peaks of the dust lanes.
“These are places where we can find the newest, largest stars in galaxies,” University of Alberta physics professor Erik Rosolowsky said in a statement. said.
This aspect of the newly imaged spiral galaxies is particularly evident in the image of barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300, located 69 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
Images taken by JWST’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) show millions of mature stars as bright blue jewels shining through orange ribbons of gas and dust. Some of these blue stars are clustered together, while others are spread out throughout their respective galaxies.
These hot blue stars are clearly visible in the JWST PHANGS image of spiral galaxy NGC 7496, located 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus.
The powerful space telescope also detected several gaps within the gas and dust lanes, surprising astronomers studying these spiral galaxies in the JWST image.
“These holes may have formed as a result of one or more stars exploding and creating giant holes in the interstellar material,” Adam Leroy, an astronomy professor at Ohio State University, said in a statement. said.
NGC 5068, one of the galaxies imaged by JWST as part of the PHANGS program and located 20 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, appears to be dominated by such large voids.
Of course, one of the most striking features of any spiral galaxy concerns the “arms” that radiate from the central core of densely packed stars, forming an iconic spiral. By following these arms, astronomers can find large regions of glowing gas and dust.
“These structures tend to follow the same pattern in certain parts of galaxies,” Rosolowsky explained. “We think of them like waves, and their spacing tells us a lot about how a galaxy distributes its gas and dust.”
As dense clouds of gas and dust collapse to form new stars, detailed study of these structures can provide important information about how intense bursts of star formation in galaxies are triggered, sustained, and then stopped.
These spiral arms have probably never looked more dynamic and vibrant than in the new JWST image of NGC 628, a spiral galaxy 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. In the image, the galaxy’s arms appear to spew out gas and dust like splashes of bright orange spray paint.
Additionally, some galaxies seen by JWST as part of this observing program show pink and red diffraction spikes spread across their central regions.
“This is a clear sign that there may be an active supermassive black hole,” Eva Schinnerer, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, said in a statement. “Or the clusters of stars towards the center are so bright that they saturate that area of the image.”
This can be seen in the JWST image of NGC 1365, located 56 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax.
What is clear from these images of 19 spiral galaxies is that galaxies grow from the inside out, meaning that the birth of stars begins in the hearts of galaxies and then propagates outward through these spiral arms.
This means that the further a star is from the core of a galaxy, the more likely it is to be relatively young, mostly due to older stars clustered at the hearts of galaxies.
RELATED STORIES
— James Webb Space Telescope captures stunning view of supernova’s expanding remnants (photos)
– ‘Bizarre’ cosmic tug-of-war in Tarantula Nebula weaves new stars
— Early galaxies looked like surfboards and pool noodles, James Webb Space Telescope finds
“I feel like our team is consistently positively overwhelmed by the amount of detail in these images,” Homas Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, said in the statement.
The full catalog of new JWST spiral galaxy images is available here.