Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Peer inside the bar of a barred spiral galaxy in new James Webb image

Georgina Torbet
By

The newest image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning display of dust and stars that form the bar of the barred spiral galaxy NCG 5068, located 17 million light-years away. Like our galaxy, the Milky Way, this galaxy has a central bar that is a more concentrated region of stars and dust compared to the arms that reach out from the galaxy’s center.

The image was taken using two of Webb’s instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). By looking in both the mid- and near-infrared wavelengths, Webb is able to pick out features like the swirls of dust and gas, as well as the stars in this region, with the bar of the galaxy glowing in the top left of the image.

A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team

The bar of a barred spiral galaxy is typically a busy region of star formation, so this image was collected as part of a study into star formation in nearby galaxies. The Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS project (PHANGS) involves both Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope, along with other ground-based telescopes like the Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and is a survey to take high-resolution images like this one of regions of star formation.

Recommended Videos

For this project, “Webb collected images of 19 nearby star-forming galaxies, which astronomers could then combine with catalogs from Hubble of 10,000 star clusters, spectroscopic mapping of 20,000 star-forming emission nebulae from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and observations of 12 000 dark, dense molecular clouds identified by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA),” Webb scientists write. “These observations span the electromagnetic spectrum and give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to piece together the minutiae of star formation.”

Related

Webb is particularly useful for studying star formation, because it looks in the infrared wavelengths. This allows its instruments to see through clouds of dust, which would be opaque in the visible light wavelength. In the image above, you can see the dust forming a green web-like structure between the stars, which glow as points of light. Bubbles of gas are shown in red.

You can also check out the views taken by MIRI and NIRCam individually.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
James Webb photographs two potential exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs
Illustration of a cloudy exoplanet and a disk of debris orbiting a white dwarf star.

Even though scientists have now discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, it's a rare thing that any telescope can take an image of one of these planets. That's because they are so small and dim compared to the stars that they orbit around that it's easier to detect their presence based on their effects on the star rather than them being detected directly.

However, thanks to its exceptional sensitivity, the James Webb Space Telescope was recently able to image two potential exoplanets orbiting around small, cold cores of dead stars called white dwarfs directly.

Read more
See 19 gorgeous face-on spiral galaxies in new James Webb data
This collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light is at once overwhelming and awe-inspiring. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured millions of stars in these images. Older stars appear blue here, and are clustered at the galaxies’ cores. The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observations highlight glowing dust, showing where it exists around and between stars – appearing in shades of red and orange. Stars that haven’t yet fully formed and are encased in gas and dust appear bright red.

A stunning new set of images from the James Webb Space Telescope illustrates the variety of forms that exist within spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. The collection of 19 images shows a selection of spiral galaxies seen from face-on in the near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths, highlighting the similarities and differences that exist across these majestic celestial objects.

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee of the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a statement. “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.”

Read more
James Webb snaps a stunning stellar nursery in a nearby satellite galaxy
This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionised, captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).

A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a star-forming region in the nearby galaxy of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Our Milky Way galaxy has a number of satellite galaxies, which are smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to our own, the largest of which is the Large Magellanic Cloud or LMC.

The image was taken using Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument or MIRI, which looks at slightly longer wavelengths than its other three instruments which operate in the near-infrared. That means MIRI is well suited to study things like the warm dust and gas found in this region in a nebula called N79.

Read more