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NASA’s Webb Telescope captures 19 galaxies with millions of stars

  • NASA releases photos of galaxies taken by James Webb Space Telescope
  • Galaxies feature millions of stars, potential supermassive black holes
  • Photos provide more clarity, new colors from those seen in Hubble photos

A collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light is shown. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team)

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(NewsNation) — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured images of 19 spiral galaxies showing “staggering” structure.

The photos released Monday by NASA depict galaxies with “clearly defined arms” brimming with stars, as well as centers comprising old star clusters or supermassive black holes.

The images are part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, NASA said in a news release.

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in the news release. “They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”

Millions of stars were captured in the images, which appear in blue tones. Some are spread throughout the galaxies’ spiral arms, while others are in clusters.

Also seen are stars not yet fully formed that are encased in gas and dust that feed their growth.

“These are where we can find the newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” Erik Rosolowsky, a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, said in the news release.

The center of the galaxies tell a story, too. Areas near the core that look blue are populations of older stars, while pink and red “refraction spikes” possibly indicate a supermassive black hole.

“Or, the star clusters toward the center are so bright that they have saturated that area of the image,” said Eva Schinnerer, a staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

The Webb photos provide a new look at some of the galaxies that were previously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“The amount of analysis that can be done with these images is vastly larger than anything our team could possibly handle,” Rosolowsky said. “We’re excited to support the community so all researchers can contribute.”

See a gallery of the images below.

Space

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