In this view from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, Arp 220 lights up the night sky shining like a dazzling beacon amidst a sea of galaxies.
A stunning smash-up of two spiral galaxies sparkles in infrared with the light of more than a trillion suns. The colliding galaxies, collectively called Arp 220, ignited a tremendous burst of star birth.
Actually, Arp 220, two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, shines brightest in infrared light, so it is an ideal target for Webb.
It is a ULIRG, or ultra-luminous infrared galaxy, with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. Our Milky Way galaxy, in comparison, has a much more modest luminosity of roughly ten billion suns.
Arp 220, located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Serpens, the Serpent, is the 220th object in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
It is the nearest ULIRG and the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.
The collision of the two spiral galaxies started around 700 million years ago. It sparked a massive explosion of star formation.
About 200 huge star clusters reside in a dense, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across (nearly 5% of our Milky Way's diameter). The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all of the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy.
Webb detects faint tidal tails, or material dragged off the galaxies by gravity, on the outskirts of this merger, which are shown in blue and provide evidence of the galactic dance that is occurring.
Organic material represented in reddish-orange appears in streams and filaments across Arp 220. NASA's Webb used its NIRCam and MIRI to observe Arp 220.
Each of the combining galactic cores is encircled by a rotating, star-forming ring blasting out the glaring light that Webb captured in infrared. This brilliant light creates a prominent, spiked, starburst feature. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)