James Webb Space Telescope Photo of Car Wheel Galaxy

In 1941, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky discovered a galaxy with a diameter of 150,000 light years. Seeing this more chaotic structure as one of the mysteries to be explained, Zwicky named the galaxy The Cartwheel Galaxy.

The Cartwheel Galaxy is approximately 500 million light-years from our planet. The name of this interesting celestial body comes from its shape resembling the wheel of a chariot, which was born from the collision of two spiral galaxies. In fact, there is also a small galaxy that is part of the system, but that galaxy is not included in these images.

The veil of secrecy on the Car Wheel Galaxy is being lifted

You can access the full image by clicking here.

When two and a half giant galaxies collide, copious amounts of material are released into space, and the resulting galaxy also undergoes radical structural changes. Until now, we couldn’t get much information about this galaxy because our observation power was more limited.

What we knew was that there was a small, solid-colored spiral galaxy in the center and a second layer around it, seen from colorful branches. That’s why the galaxy was described as a ring galaxy.

You can access the full image by clicking here.

Two different photos of the same galaxy were shared. The reason for this is that the images were shot with two different instruments. While the image from NIRCam consists mainly of blue, orange and yellow colors, the imaging tool called MIRI, which works in the infrared spectrum, created a red-dominated image.

The left part of the above image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the part on the right was taken with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope show that the celestial body is still in its transitional phase. According to scientists, the current state of the structure, which was formed primarily by the combination of separate spiral galaxies, also gives us information about the past and future of the Car Wheel Galaxy.