Washington: NASA released on Friday a stunning pair of images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, showcasing two galaxies in the process of merging in a cosmic dance. This release marks two years since the observatory’s first scientific results were unveiled.
Webb launched in 2021 and operational since 2022, has significantly enhanced our understanding of the early universe while delivering breathtaking images of the cosmos. The two galaxies in these latest images, nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg, are located 326 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. For context, a light year is the distance light travels in one year, approximately 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
“We see two galaxies, each a collection of billions of stars. The galaxies are in the process of merging. That’s a common way that galaxies like our own build up over time, to grow from small galaxies like those that Webb has found shortly after the Big Bang into mature galaxies like our own Milky Way,” said Jane Rigby, NASA Webb senior project scientist.
Since becoming operational, Webb has observed galaxies filled with stars that formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago.
The interacting galaxies, known collectively as Arp 142, appear in the imagery enveloped by a haze of stars and gas. The Penguin galaxy, formally known as NGC 2936, is a spiral galaxy now slightly distorted. Its shape, from the telescope’s perspective, resembles a penguin, complete with a beak-like region. The Egg galaxy, formally NGC 2937, is a compact elliptical galaxy. Together, their appearance suggests a penguin guarding its egg.
This galactic interaction started between 25 and 75 million years ago, and the two galaxies are expected to merge into a single entity hundreds of millions of years from now.
Webb has provided unprecedented insights into the early universe, detecting the earliest-known galaxies and studying the composition of planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, and the nature of star-forming regions in the cosmos.
“This mission has allowed us to look back to the most distant galaxies ever observed and understand the very early universe in a new way,” said Mark Clampin, astrophysics division director at NASA headquarters. “For example, with Webb, we’ve found that these very early galaxies are more massive and brighter than we expected, posing the question: How did they get so big so quickly?”
Webb is designed to be more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which continues to operate. Webb primarily observes the universe in infrared wavelengths, while Hubble focuses on optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.
“Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever put in space. It specializes in capturing infrared light – wavelengths of light longer than our eyes can see. With its incredible sensitivity to those wavelengths, we’ve been able to look back into the early universe in a way previous missions couldn’t, see through dust and gas into the heart of star formation, and examine the composition of exoplanet atmospheres like never before,” Clampin added.
Looking ahead, Clampin concluded, “Some of Webb’s most exciting investigations will be the things we haven’t even thought of yet.”
