![]() ![]() To better understand how dense regions of dust and gas coalesce into burning stars, astronomers need to know details like ages, masses, and spectra (wavelengths of light, which can reveal the chemical makeup of an object) about star clusters, star-forming regions called nebulae, and loose dust floating in the interstellar medium. MIRI is also imaging 18 other galaxies for the project, called PHANGS. ![]() Notice the filaments of matter that seem to form lattices of gas and dust through the spiral arms they’re much more visible in infrared than in optical or ultraviolet light. This image - focusing on the center of the Phantom Galaxy and the spiral arms of stars and dust radiating out from it - combines a false-color image from MIRI with an earlier image from Hubble, so we’re seeing features of the galaxy that normally aren’t visible in the same wavelengths of light. This image was produced by combining optical and ultraviolet data from Hubble with infrared data from Webb, assigning specific visible colors to the wavelengths of light that our eyes can’t actually see. M74 might also be the home of an extremely rare intermediate-mass black hole, detected in 2005. Astronomers have witnessed three supernovae in M74 just in the past 20 years, and one of those was probably a hypernova, an extremely powerful type of supernova that happens when a star more than 30 times the mass of our Sun collapses to form a black hole. (While not naming names, ESA is clearly throwing some shade at the likes of spiral galaxy NGC 4237, which is 60 million light years away and doing its best.)īut don’t judge the Phantom Galaxy solely on its striking appearance it’s also an interesting and eventful cosmic spot. It’s what astronomers call a “grand design spiral” because its arms are so clear and well-defined - “unlike the patchy and ragged structure seen in some spiral galaxies,” writes the European Space Agency in a recent statement. M74, the Phantom Galaxy, is the Platonic ideal of a spiral galaxy. ![]() But these stunning images, and the data behind them, wouldn’t tell astronomers half as much without help from the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument, MIRI, zoomed in a spiral galaxy 32 million light years away to help a team of astronomers study the earliest stages of star formation, and the result is a surreal, gorgeous image of M74, also called the Phantom Galaxy. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |