James Webb Space Telescope photos, which were just made public, reveal 19
spiral galaxies that are comparatively near to our Milky Way. The photos
provide fresh insights into the structure, development, and star creation of
galaxies.
A group of scientists working on a project named Physics at High Angular
resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) released the photos to the public on
Monday. The initiative uses a number of significant astronomy
observatories.
Among the 19 galaxies, NGC5068 is the nearest. From Earth, it is around 15
million light years away. NGC1365 is the farthest away, situated around 60
million light-years from Earth. The distance that light travels in a year,
or around 9.5 trillion kilometers, is called a light year.
Launched in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started data
collection in 2022. It has taken photographs of space and influenced our
knowledge of the early universe.
The space telescope primarily observes the cosmos in the infrared spectrum.
Since its launch in 1990 and continued operation today, the Hubble Space
Telescope has primarily studied the cosmos in optical and ultraviolet
wavelengths.
One typical type of galaxy is the spiral galaxy. One is our Milky
Way.
Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam)
provided the fresh observations. They display millions, if not billions, of
individual stars in addition to around 100,000 star clusters.
Astronomer Thomas Williams of the University of Oxford commented, "These
data are important as they give us a new view on the earliest phase of star
formation." He oversaw the group's processing of the picture data.
Williams went on, "Stars are born deep within dusty clouds that block out
light at visible wavelengths, which are the wavelengths that the Hubble
Space Telescope can detect, but these clouds light up at the wavelengths
that the JWST can detect." We are not very knowledgeable about this
stage.
Approximately 50% of spiral galaxies contain a bar, or straight structure,
extending from the center. This structure is where the spiral arms
attach.
According to Williams, the widely accepted theory states that galaxies
develop internally first. They "get bigger and bigger over their lifetimes"
in this way.
For the first time, the high-resolution structure of the dust and gas
clouds that give rise to stars and planets could be determined by scientists
thanks to these photographs.
The photos are located in galaxies that are outside of the Small and Large
Magellanic Clouds. The Milky Way is close to the two galaxies.
Hubble's observations are reinforced by Webb's.
Astronomer Erik Rosolowsky works at the University of Alberta in Canada.
"We would see the starlight from galaxies using Hubble, but some of the
light was blocked by the dust of galaxies," he stated.
"This limitation made it hard to understand some aspects of how a galaxy
functions as a system," Rosolowsky continued. We can see through this dust
to glimpse stars inside and behind the encasing dust thanks to Webb's
infrared vision."
