The James Webb Space Telescope continues to send fascinating shots after its first images released last month. The new image from Webb is of the Cartwheel Galaxy and was created with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Intermediate Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
The Webb team says the two cameras are combined in this image so that details that are hard to see in individual images can be revealed. NIRCam data sees blue, orange and yellow while MIRI data is in red. The Webb team notes that in the middle of the red dust are many individual blue dots, which are individual stars or “pockets” of star formation.
The Cartwheel Galaxy was formed as a result of a high-speed collision about 400 million years ago. It consists of two rings: a bright inner ring and a colored outer ring that both expand outward from the center of the formation, which looks like a shock wave as the Webb team described.
“Given these two competing forces, the form the Cartwheel Galaxy will eventually take remains a mystery,” the researchers said.
“Despite the impact, much of the character of the large, spiral galaxy that existed before the collision remains, including its spinning arms,” says the Webb team. Still, the team says the observations are still at an “early” stage.
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