Astronomers recently shared a stunning new image of space from the JamesWebbSpaceTelescope, showing a galaxy with an unusually bright heart.
This new image is of a galaxy called NGC 7469, located 220 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. It is a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way, and is positioned such that it appears directly face-on to us. As well as this main galaxy, you can also see more distant galaxies in the background, as well as a companion galaxy NGC 5283 which is visible toward the bottom left of the image.
Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the image is the bright red star shape beaming out from the center of the galaxy, called the active galactic nucleus or AGN. This region is extremely bright as dust swirls around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, eventually falling in and giving off heat and light as it does.
Related “A prominent feature of this image is the striking six-pointed star that perfectly aligns with the heart of NGC 7469,” Webb scientists explain. “Unlike the galaxy, this is not a real celestial object, but an imaging artifact known as a diffraction spike, caused by the bright, unresolved AGN. Diffraction spikes are patterns produced as light bends around the sharp edges of a telescope.
This region was studied using three of Webb’s instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument , the Near-Infrared Camera , and the Near-Infrared Spectrograph . This AGN is special because close by it hosts a starburst region, where stars are being formed at a fast rate. The research using Webb aims to investigate the relationship between this AGN and the nearby starburst region, and the role played by the dust between the two.
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James Webb Space Telescope's 1st year in space has blown astronomers awayKeith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor in the United Kingdom, and has a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He's the author of 'The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence' (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astrobiology for a multitude of magazines and websites.
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