A brand new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows that relating to galaxies, appearances could be deceiving.
The image shows a serene-looking orange-red galaxy, but this cosmic spiral of gas, dust, and stars hides a violent past representing the wreckage of a large collision between two earlier galaxies that proceeded around 500 million years ago.
The galaxy in query is NGC 3256, which lies around 120 million light-years from Earth and is a member of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster. Hints on the chaotic past of this swirl-like galaxy are hidden inside the James Webb Space Telescope image in the shape of long tendrils of shining dust and stars which extend outwards from the most important body of the galaxy and the brightest portions of NGC 3256.
The study of those cosmic collisions can teach astronomers an excellent deal about how galaxies like our own, the Milky Way, grow by merging with other galaxies. As this galactic growth ends in the merging and growth of black holes, studying wreckage like NGC 3256 could also help solve the mystery of how the supermassive black holes at the center of most galaxies can grow to masses corresponding to hundreds of thousands and even billions of times that of the sun.
Related: Saturn’s rings look gorgeous in 1st James Webb Space Telescope photo of the gas giant
The historic merger that created NGC 3256 can also be liable for an intense burst of star formation within the galaxy. This happens because when galaxies collide, they channel gas and mud together into dense clouds to grow to be the raw material needed for star birth.
The creation of young stars could be seen in the shape of the brightest regions inside the orange/red glow of NGC 3256. These stars are blasting out infrared light, irradiating tiny grains of dust that cause the galaxy to glow brightly and make it an ideal goal for the JWST, which is designed to see the universe in infrared.
When galaxies collide, most stellar bodies escape the violent collisions unscathed, unlike the gas and mud content of those galaxies. That is because of enormous voids between stars. But it surely isn’t the case for all the celebs in those galaxies. Visible within the JWST image of NGC 3256 are threads of stars that were wrenched freed from their home galaxies consequently of gravitational interactions between the colliding galaxies giving rise to incredible tidal forces.
The stunning image of this galaxy was created by the JWST using data from its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). Visualizing NGC 3256 in this fashion demonstrates the usefulness of the JWST, essentially the most powerful telescope ever placed into orbit around Earth, in understanding the expansion of galaxies and the evolution of the universe.