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The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a new image of a galaxy 17 million light-years away.
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Thousands of stars are visible, many of them concentrated in the heart of the galaxy.
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JWST peers into the heart of many galaxies to help scientists better understand star formation.
With the power of James Webb Space Telescopewe can glimpse the mysterious hearts of galaxies. And that’s exactly what you see here, here new picture from Webb of the galaxy NGC 5068.
NGC 5068 is located about 17 million light-years from Earth. For perspective, the neighborhood of galaxies of the Milky Way is called Local Group, is 5 million light-years away. So, this galaxy is beyond what we can consider close.
Each individual dot of white light you see is a star, per Mashable. NASA says there are thousands of stars in this image. And many of them hang out in the center of space, which you can see in the upper left as a bright bar of white light.
This region appears very bright because that is where most of the stars are concentrated. All the action is there too.
James Webb peered into the hearts of many galaxies to uncover their secrets
Most galaxies have very bright centers due to hot dust heated by massive star explosions, according to Harvard Smithsonian. And it is this star formation that astronomers are interested in studying with the help of JWST.
In fact, NGC 5068 is just one of a series of other galaxies that Webb is observing for a project to help us better understand star formation. Webb also took pictures of the spiral galaxy IC 5332:
And the heart of the galaxy M74, aka the “Phantom Galaxy”:
The James Webb Space Telescope has the advantage of visible in infrared.
Infrared wavelengths are too long for the human eye to detect. But they are especially important for space studies because they allow JWST to peer into obscuring visual light that would otherwise prevent our ability to see the hearts of galaxies and their dense formation environments. of stars
“By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, astronomers hope to initiate major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb,” NASA said.
Watch a video of NGC 5068 below:
Read the original article at Business Insider