James Webb has taken a beautiful photo of a star born in the constellation Virgo. The latest image from the powerful observatory takes a closer look at the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068. These types of galaxies are known by the bright central bar running across them, which you can see in the upper left corner. New movie.
The galaxy is located in the constellation Virgo, about 20 million light-years from Earth. What makes this image so intriguing and strange is that the web’s various sensors allow astronomers to dig deeper than the surface-level light and gas we typically see in a photograph of a distant galaxy.
Instead, Webb is capable of peering much deeper into the galaxy to provide a front-row seat to star birth, where glowing bubbles of gas show the first evidence of newborn stars. But this film is not the only turning point. On the contrary, NASA says It is part of a wider effort to collect images of star formation.
The space agency hopes to collect as many images as it can, giving astronomers plenty of data to work with and learn from. In total, Webb captured three different images of stars born in the constellation Virgo. The first image is a combination of the MIRI and NIRCam instruments on the telescope. Additionally, NASA has also shared NIRCam and MIRI images to provide deeper insights into the galaxy.
NASA displayed all of the images in its announcement detailing the various observations made by the Webb space crew when the images were captured. Like most web images, they give us a deeper look at the universe than we could without the web, which is why the telescope is such a wonderful addition to ESA and NASA’s ongoing science efforts.
More than just snapping photos of star birth, Webb has turned our own theories about the expansion of the universe and galactic evolution on their heads.