Luxurious spiral galaxy in the eye of the James Webb Telescope

space telescope James Webb Capture new details of the so-called Phantom Galaxy in a stunning image showing its spiral shape released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.

Launched into space in late 2021 and up and running since July, James Webb has since revealed fascinating images of Jupiter, nebulae and other distant galaxies, providing scientists with a wealth of never-before-seen data to analyze. The figure published on Monday shows M74, or the Phantom Galaxy, its brilliant blue core and flawless vortex, spotted by the MIRI instrument, which studies mid-infrared and is the result of a European-American collaboration.

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32 million light years

“Webb’s insight revealed fine filaments of gas and dust in the luminous spiral arms that project out from the center of this image.“Notes on its ESA website, which specifies that the galaxy has already been observed by the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990 and is still in operation. The European Agency, which co-developed the telescope with NASA, also noted that “Gas shortageIt allows a clearer view of the stars in the center of the galaxy, located about 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.

data collected”It will allow astronomers to determine the regions of the galaxy where stars form, accurately measure the mass and age of star clusters and better understand the nature of tiny dust grains drifting in interstellar space.“, further notes the European Space Agency. An engineering gem worth $ 10 billion, the James Webb Telescope conducts its observations 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Researchers announced last week that it had detected for the first time the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, i.e. A planet outside our solar system.