NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Team Up to Trace Interstellar Dust Within a Galactic Pair
A new Webb image of a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy, combined with a Hubble image, is helping astronomers in studying the effects of interstellar dust and for the first time identifying a previously unknown lensed galaxy.
Researchers were able to trace light emitted by the large white elliptical galaxy (at left) through the spiral galaxy (at right) by combining data from NASA's Hubble and Webb Space Telescope.
They were also able to identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy by combining data from these telescopes: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
According to researchers, Webb’s near-infrared data show the galaxy’s longer, extremely dusty spiral arms in far more detail, giving the arms an appearance of overlapping with the central bulge of the bright white elliptical galaxy on the left.
This image of galaxy pair VV 191 includes near-infrared light from the Webb Space Telescope, and ultraviolet and visible light from the Hubble Telescope.
The image of galaxy pair VV 191 is the latest addition to a small number of galaxies that helps researchers directly compare the properties of galactic dust.
This target was chosen among over 2,000 superimposed galaxy pairs identified by the volunteers of Galaxy Zoo citizen science.
According to researchers, since dust changes the brightness and colors that appear in images of the galaxies, it is important to understand where dust is present in galaxies.
Because dust grains play a role in the formation of new stars and planets, scientists are always seeking to identify their presence for future research.
In the inset at 10 o'clock, a faint red arc appears above the white elliptical galaxy at left. This is a very distant galaxy with a warped appearance. Its light is bent by the gravity of the elliptical foreground galaxy. Its appearance is also duplicated.
The stretched red arc is warped and reappears at 4 o'clock as a dot. Green, yellow, and red were assigned to Webb's near-infrared data taken at 0.9, 1.5, and 3.56 microns (F090W, F150W, and F356W respectively) in this image.
Blue was assigned to two Hubble filters, ultraviolet data taken in 0.34 microns (F336W) and visible light in 0.61 microns (F606W).
This image of VV 191 shows additional galaxies deeper and deeper in the background like many Webb images.
Two patchy spirals to the upper left of the elliptical galaxy have similar apparent sizes, but show up in very different colors.
One is likely very dusty and the other very far away, but astronomers need to obtain data known as spectra to determine which is which.