2 galaxies merge in space, Webb telescope sends photos

Washington:

NASA on Friday released a pair of images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope showing two galaxies – one nicknamed the Penguin and the other the Egg – in the process of merging in a kind of cosmic ballet, as the US space agency completed two years since revealing the first scientific results from the orbiting observatory.

Webb, which launched in 2021 and began collecting data the following year, has reshaped understanding of the early universe while taking stunning photos of the cosmos. The two galaxies in the images are located 326 million light years from Earth, in the constellation Hydra. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

“We see two galaxies, each a collection of billions of stars. The galaxies are in the process of merging. This is a common way that galaxies like ours build over time, to grow from small galaxies – like those that Webb discovered shortly after the Big Bang – in mature galaxies like our Milky Way,” said Jane Rigby, senior scientist on NASA’s Webb project.

Photo credit: Reuters

Since becoming operational, Webb has observed star-studded galaxies that formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang event that marked the beginning of the Universe about 13.8 billion years ago.

The mix of the Penguin and Egg galaxies are known collectively as Arp 142. They are shown in the images joined by a haze that is a mix of stars and gas amid their slow-motion merger.

The Penguin Galaxy, so named because its shape from the telescope’s perspective resembles that of a flightless bird, including a beak-like region, is formally called NGC 2936. It is a spiral-shaped galaxy, now somewhat distorted. The Egg galaxy, also named for its shape, is formally called NGC 2937. It is a compact galaxy with an elliptical shape. Together, their appearance suggests a penguin guarding its egg.

Their interaction, according to NASA, began between 25 and 75 million years ago, and they are expected to become a single galaxy hundreds of millions of years from now.

Photo credit: Reuters

Webb detected the first known galaxies and provided insights into areas such as the composition of planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, and the nature of star-forming regions in the cosmos.

“This mission allowed us to look at the most distant galaxies ever observed and understand the early Universe in a new way,” said Mark Clampin, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters. “For example, with Webb, we discovered that these very old galaxies are more massive and brighter than we expected, raising the question: how did they get so big so quickly?”

Webb was designed to be more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which also continues its work. Webb observes the universe primarily in infrared, while Hubble examined it primarily in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

“Webb is the largest and most powerful telescope ever placed in space. It specializes in capturing infrared light – wavelengths of light longer than our eyes can see. With its incredible sensitivity to these wavelengths, we are able to look back , to the early universe in a way that previous missions have not been able to, see through the dust and gas into the heart of star formation, and examine the composition of exoplanet atmospheres like never before,” said Clampin.

Looking ahead, Clampin added, “Some of Webb’s most exciting investigations will be the ones we haven’t even thought about yet.”

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