Sharmila Kuthunur
Tue, October 10, 2023
A beautiful cloud-like shape is seen with hues of blue and red blending into each other.
A star-studded cosmic neighbor 210,000 light-years away is now available to view on our computer screens in unprecedented detail, thanks to NASA’s mighty James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the power of modern internet connection.
The newly released James Webb Space Telescope photo captures NGC 346, a star-forming region in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The blue wisps of light represent emissions from molecules like silicates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, while red fragments highlight dust warmed by the brightest and most massive stars in the region’s center.
Overall, astronomers have detected 1,001 light dots in the image — and most of them are still young stars blanketed in dust, according to a statement accompanying the image. This pocket of the universe is much younger than the Milky Way, our home galaxy, which is seen in the fewer amounts of heavy elements it features. The intriguing region is visible to the unaided eye in the southern constellation Tucana.
Related: James Webb Space Telescope's stunning mosaic of Orion Nebula uncovers rogue planets (photos)
The full view of the NGC 346 region in the Small Magellanic Cloud that the JWST captured. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, N. Habel (JPL), P. Kavanagh (Maynooth University)
Heavy metals are usually churned in stars across timespans of eons, then deposited back into their local surroundings via cosmic processes like nuclear fusion and supernova explosions. Astronomers know cosmic dust is formed from those heavy elements, so they expected to see little of it in the NGC 346 region. However, the latest photo shows “ample dust within this region,” Webb representatives wrote in the statement.
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Astronomers say the image, which was captured using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) onboard Webb, is allowing them to better understand how many stars and protostars are present in the region. Those observations could eventually shed more light on an era in the universe billions of years ago known as cosmic noon.
At that time, star births reached a peak rate across the universe and the level of heavy elements was lower than amounts measured today — a distribution in line with how NGC 346 is now evidenced to be.
Hubble Telescope captures star-packed galaxy spinning like a top (photo)
Sharmila Kuthunur
Fri, October 13, 2023
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's view of NGC 685 in the constellation Eridanus, the River.
NGC 685 is about 58 million light-years from Earth. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))
Some 58 million light-years from Earth, the NGC 685 galaxy appears to be spinning like a top in the depths of space.
The Hubble Space Telescope image, the final of six released as part of NASA's Hubble Galaxy Week from Oct. 2 to Oct. 7, captures the galaxy with its curvy spiral arms dotted with countless pockets of bright blue regions.
Here, astronomers say stars reside in packed regions called star clusters. Closer to the galaxy's center are many curled red light tendrils, representing lanes of gas and dust where new generations of stars manifest across eons.
Related: Hubble Telescope discovers thousands of hot stars camouflaging a spiral galaxy (photo)
The NASA statement accompanying the image describes an average-size galaxy like the NGC 685, which resides in the constellation Eridanus and spans 60,000 light years, can host at least 100 million stars. In comparison, the Milky Way is thought to consist of around 100 billion stars.
Despite the difference in size and number of stars, both galaxies share an interesting feature in that they both have a central bar cutting across their respective galactic nucleus, not unlike the slash across a no-smoking sign. In the latest NGC 685 image, you can spot this bar speckled with red stretching horizontally within the smallest circle of gas and dust.
"Its intense glow comes from many stars concentrated in a relatively small area," according to the NASA statement.
Previous research has found that such bars are seen in about two-thirds of spiral galaxies. Gas and other stellar material are also fueled toward the cores of galaxies via these bars, reflecting signs that the "formative years" of a galaxy have ended, astronomers say.
While there isn’t much work done on NGC 685 itself, studying barred spiral galaxies like it informs astronomers on how galaxies evolve, and how the process differed for our Milky Way galaxy.
Hubble Telescope discovers thousands of hot stars camouflaging a spiral galaxy (photo)
Samantha Mathewson
Thu, October 12, 2023 a
A cropped section of the splotchy Hubble image. Various pinkish-red blobs are seen across a deep blue starry background.
Bright pink splotches of young star clusters camouflage a barred spiral galaxy in a new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The galaxy, called NGC 5068, lies about 20 million light-years from Earth in the southern region of the constellation Virgo. NGC 5068 is believed to be approximately 45,000 light-years in diameter and have a prominent central structure shaped like a bar (captured in the top center of the new Hubble image) that is densely packed with mature stars, according to a statement from NASA.
Like most galaxies, NGC 5068 has a black hole lurking at its center, behind the central bar. This black hole draws the stars together with its intense gravitational pull. Bright pinkish-red patches spread across the foreground of the new image represent thousands of hot, young star clusters, which emit ultraviolet light. The process of star formation heats the surrounding interstellar material, creating these bright regions of ionized hydrogen gas.
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"Though not very clear from this angle, these splotches are along the galaxy’s spiral arms, where new stars typically form," NASA officials said in the statement.
You can vaguely make out the galaxy’s swirling spiral arms by tracing the pattern of the bright pinkish-red patches circling the central bar-shaped structure. This new Hubble image combines ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared data to capture all of the galaxy’s intricate features, which emit different wavelengths of light.
A full version of the new Hubble image. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Chandar (University of Toledo), and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))
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NGC 5068 is believed to house at least 110 Wolf-Rayet stars, which are old, massive stars that lose mass at a very high rate. This type of star is generally more than 25 times the mass of our sun and up to a million times more luminous. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has 220 Wolf-Rayet stars, according to the statement.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) also recently photographed NGC 5068. The JWST infrared image, released in June, was captured as part of a science campaign to study star formation in gaseous regions of nearby galaxies. Since Webb released its first images on July 12, 2022, it has continued to build on earlier Hubble observations of various cosmic objects, including a collection of 10,000 images of star clusters, NASA officials said in the statement.
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