It is located 500 million light-years from Earth, in the Sculptor constellation. What this stunning photograph reveals about the past and future of this galaxy.
"This image of Cartwheel and its companion galaxies is a composite from Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), revealing details that are difficult to see in the individual images alone," they said. a statement (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO production team).
Since it began to generate images, the James Webb Space Telescope has been able to provide a look through time and large amounts of dust. In each photograph, the so-called largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space managed to amaze the world. It has now released a new image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, also known as the Wagon Wheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light-years from Earth in the Sculptor constellation. What this image revealed, cataloged by experts as “unprecedented”.
“The Cartwheel Galaxy, located some 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is a rare sight. Its appearance, much like that of a cartwheel, is the result of an intense event: a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not seen in this image. and the European Space Agency in a statement.
In that sense, they highlighted that “collision of galactic proportions cause a cascade of different and smaller events between the galaxies involved; and Cartwheel is no exception", as the image revealed "new details about star formation and the galaxy's central black hole".
They also noted that this high-speed collision caused Cartwheel to take its current shape, as the impact caused the formation of two rings that spread out from the center of the galaxy "like ripples in a pond after a stone is thrown," they said. . "The collision most notably affected the shape and structure of the Cartwheel Galaxy, which sports two rings: a bright inner ring and a surrounding colorful ring," they described.
These two rings, they noted, "expand outward from the center of the collision" and, as a result, astronomers called it a "ring galaxy," a less common structure than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. “The bright core contains a huge amount of hot dust, and the brightest areas are home to gigantic clusters of young stars. On the other hand, the outer ring, which has been expanding for about 440 million years, is dominated by star formation and supernovae,” they continued. "As this ring expands, it collides with surrounding gas and triggers star formation," they noted.
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