The NASA released on Friday some pictures of two galaxies merging in some sort of “cosmic ballet.” These are called the Penguin and the Egg, located 326 million light years away in the constellation Hydra.
These images were released to commemorate two years since the telescope’s first scientific findings.
This photo was taken by James Webb Space Telescope which was launched in 2021 with data collection starting that year.
Since then, Webb has observed galaxies undergoing a frenzy of star formation within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang that marked the beginning of our universe about 13.8 billion years ago.
“We see two galaxies, each composed of billions of stars. They are already merging. That is how many galaxies like ours have developed over time from small ones discovered by Webb just after the Big Bang into big mature ones such as Milky Way,” Jane Rigby, Nasa Webb senior project scientist noted as Reuters reports.
The same set of cosmic images displaying what looks like a misty cloud around them and connects The Penguin galaxy (NGC 2936), an irregular spiral galaxy and The Egg galaxy (NGC 2937), a compact elliptical galaxy together makes up Arp 142. The interaction between these two started ranging from twenty-five to seventy-five million ears ago and this can be viewed as one single galaxy within one hundred million years from now.
Webb telescopes has been immensely important in discovering more understanding about universe; it has made it possible for researchers to detect earliest known galaxies while also shedding light on exoplanet compositions and star-forming regions.
“This mission brings us back further than any other mission has ever done before and gave us a new way to look at early universe,” said astrophysics division director for NASA headquarters Mark Clampin adding that “For example, with Webb we found out that these very early galaxies are heavier and brighter than expected so we should then ask ourselves did they get so big so quickly?”
Being the largest and most powerful space-based telescope yet, Webb is optimised for capturing infrared light which enables it to see through dust and gases as well as examine exoplanet atmospheres in detail that has never been done before. Additionally, he highlighted that “Some of Webb’s most exciting investigations will be the things we haven’t even thought of yet.”
