This picture of the
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>James Webb Space Telescope showcases an entwined pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 1623. It lies approximately 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. The two galaxies in IC 1623 are plunging headlong into one another in a process known as a galaxy merger. A frenzied spate of star formation was ignited by their collision. This is known as a starburst and is creating new stars at a rate more than twenty times that of the
This interacting galaxy system is particularly bright at infrared wavelengths, making it an ideal proving ground for
The merger of these two galaxies has long interested astronomers. In fact, it has already been imaged by Hubble and other space telescopes. The ongoing extreme starburst is causing intense infrared emission, and the merging galaxies may well be forming a supermassive
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>black hole. A thick band of dust has blocked these valuable insights from the view of telescopes like Hubble. However, Webb’s infrared sensitivity and its impressive resolution at those wavelengths allows it to see past the dust and has resulted in the spectacular image at the top of this article, which is a combination of MIRI and NIRCam imagery.
The luminous core of the merging galaxies is both very bright and very compact, so much so that Webb’s diffraction peaks appear at the top of the galaxy in this image. The 8-pronged diffraction spikes, similar to snowflakes, are created by the interaction of starlight with the physical structure of the telescope. The spiky quality of Webb’s observations is especially noticeable in images containing bright stars, such as Webb’s first deep-field image.
Reference: “GOALS-JWST: Hidden Star Formation and Extended PAH Emission in the Luminous Infrared Galaxy VV 114” by Aaron S. Evans, David Frayer, Vassilis Charmandaris, Lee Armus, Hanae Inami, Jason Surace, Sean Linden, Baruch Soifer, Tanio Diaz-Santos, Kirsten Larson, Jeffrey Rich, Yiqing Song, Loreto Barcos-Munoz, Joseph Mazzarella, George Privon, Vivian U, Anne Medling, Torsten Boeker, Susanne Aalto, Kazushi Iwasawa, Justin Howell, Paul van der Werf, Philip N. Appleton, Thomas Bohn, Michael Brown, Christopher Hayward, Shunshi Hoshioka, Francisca Kemper, Thomas Lai, David Law, Matthew Malkan, Jason Marshall, Eric Murphy, David Sanders and Sabrina Stierwalt, Submitted, Astrophysical Journal Letters.
arXiv:2208.14507
MIRI was provided by ESA and NASA, with the instrument being designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European institutes (the European MIRI Consortium) in partnership with
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>JPL and the University of Arizona.
NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.
Results based on this observation of IC 1623 have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.