WASHINGTON | NASA on Tuesday released a rare and stunning image of a galaxy 500 million light-years away, the Cartwheel Galaxy, whose rings appear with unprecedented clarity thanks to the brand new James Webb Space Telescope.
• Also read: The James Webb telescope may have already found the most distant galaxy ever observed
• Also read: Discovery of a “dormant” stellar-mass black hole
Like our Milky Way, astronomers believe the Cartwheel Galaxy was once a spiral galaxy. But a spectacular event gave it its shape: the collision with another smaller galaxy (not visible in the image).
Two rings then formed from the center of the collision, similar to the ripples in concentric circles created when a pebble is thrown into water. That’s what earned him his famous name.
The first ring, more in the center, is very bright, and the second, outside, has been expanding for 440 million years.
As the ring expands, it collides with the surrounding gas and triggers star formation.
This galaxy has already been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope, but James Webb’s infrared capabilities are revealing new details previously hidden and making it possible to see through a large amount of dust.
The composite image, made up of observations from two of the telescope’s scientific instruments, also shows two other smaller galaxies, as well as many others in the background.
The Cartwheel Galaxy is still in a “transitional state,” NASA said in its statement. While the James Webb telescope “gives us a glimpse of (its) current state, it also gives us an idea of what has happened to it in the past and how it will develop in the future.”
The James Webb Telescope, a $10 billion engineering gem, was launched about seven months ago and is 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.