James Webb Space Telescope Image Pair of Colliding Galaxies
NASA/ESA/CSA The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a picture of a collision or merger of two galaxies. The centers of these merging galaxies are extremely bright.
Scientists said the wave of star birth was triggered by the merger of two galaxies known by the common name IC 1623. The merging pair is producing stars 20 times faster than our Milky Way galaxy.
The two galaxies seen in this image taken by James Webb are in the constellation Cetus, about 270 million light-years from Earth.
Astronomers believe that this merger of galaxies may also have formed a supermassive black hole, which is not visible in this image.
Ongoing, massive star bursts produce intense infrared emissions. Merging galaxies may be in the process of forming a supermassive black hole.
The image was created by combining data captured by three of James Webb's four instruments, the MIRI and NIRCam cameras, and the NIRSpec spectrometer, the European Space Agency.
The merger of these two galaxies has long been of interest to astronomers. Earlier the picture of IC 1623 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
But a thick band of dust blocked these valuable insights from the sight of telescopes like Hubble. Astronomers were unable to look deep enough to see stars forming from within galaxies.
NASA has compared the image of IC 1623 taken by Hubble with the image of James Webb Telescope. The bright stars are in the picture of IC 1623 taken by James Webb.
Galaxy mergers can happen when two (or more) galaxies collide. The merger rate also provides astronomers with clues about how galaxies grew in size over time.