The unusual array was created with the help of a high-tech space telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in December 2021, began operations a few months later. The 6.5-metre-diameter instrument explores the universe in the infrared range, discovering details that its still-serving predecessor Hubble, which detects in the optical and ultraviolet ranges, could not.
Since then, the space telescope positioned 1.5 million kilometers from Earth has begun producing more and more stunning images. In December, for example, he was able to find a galaxy that science thought had long disappeared. Now, the work of the James Webb Space Telescope has once again come to the fore when it comes to galaxies, serving astronomy enthusiasts with an impressive collection.
at recent days Reuters The news agency reported About the Physics of High-Angle Resolution in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) programme, under which scientists 'lensed' a total of 19 spiral galaxies using the James Webb Space Telescope and then put them into a single cluster. The closest galaxy in this remarkable group, NGC5068, is about 15 million light-years away, while the farthest NGC1365 is at least 60 million light-years away.
The images were taken using the visible and near-infrared NIRCam and the mid- and long-infrared MIRI cameras, and show nearly 100,000 star clusters as well as millions of individual stars.
“These data are important because they provide a new picture of the first stage of star formation. Stars are born deep in dust clouds that completely block light at visible wavelengths – which the Hubble Space Telescope is sensitive to – but these clouds become visible at JWST's wavelength.
The importance of the research and the advantage of the new space telescope were explained by Thomas Williams, an astronomer at the University of Oxford, who led the data processing of the recordings. The expert also added that we still know very little about the early stages of galaxy formation, so information obtained using the James Webb Space Telescope will be vital in understanding how the stars inside them begin their lives.
Captured galaxies can be seen separately and in high resolution In the James Webb Space Telescope photo gallery.
