The close proximity of Stephan’s Quintet gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of the galaxy group called “Stephan’s Quintet” in an enormous new image. The close proximity of this group gives scien
An enormous mosaic of Stephan’s Quintet is the largest image to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The visual grouping of five galaxies was captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument . Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
The top spectrum, from the black hole’s outflow, shows a region filled with hot, ionized gases, including iron, argon, neon, sulfur, and oxygen as denoted by the peaks at given wavelengths. The presence of multiple emission lines from the same element with different degrees of ionization is valuable for understanding the properties and origins of the outflow.
Some of the key emission lines seen by NIRSpec are shown in this image and represent different phases of gas. Atomic hydrogen, in blue and yellow, allows scientists to discover the structure of the outflow. Iron ions, in teal, trace the places where the hot gas is located. Molecular hydrogen, in red, is very cold and dense, and traces both outflowing gas and the reservoir of fuel for the black hole.
Much like medical magnetic resonance imaging , the IFUs allow scientists to “slice and dice” the information into many images for detailed study. Webb pierced through the shroud of dust surrounding the nucleus to reveal hot gas near the active black hole and measure the velocity of bright outflows. The telescope captured these outflows driven by the black hole in a level of detail that has never been seen before.
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