Astronomers using James Webb Telescope observe 'merging of galaxies'

[Judi Lynn]

OCT. 20, 2022 / 3:27 PM

By Joe Fisher



Oct. 20 (UPI) -- An international team of scientists discovered the merging of galaxies using images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA reported Thursday.

The telescope has captured numerous jaw-dropping images since its deployment in last December. According to research published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, one of the latest images reveals galaxies in transition.

A cluster of at least three galaxies swirl around a red quasar -- a bright, galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive blackhole. The report from NASA said this new revelation will "expand our understanding of how galaxy clusters in the early universe came together and formed the cosmic web we see today."

"With previous images, we thought we saw hints that the galaxy was possibly interacting with other galaxies on the path to merger because their shapes get distorted in the process and we thought we maybe saw that," said co-principal investigator Nadia L. Zakamska, a Johns Hopkins astrophysicist and one of the founders of the project. "But after we got the Webb data, I was like, 'I have no idea what we're even looking at here, what is all this stuff!' We spent several weeks just staring and staring at these images."

More:
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/10/20/7041666288645/

[brush]

1. Anyone have any idea what the brownish, cloudy formations...

are made of?

[SCantiGOP]

3. Star stuff

Mainly hydrogen and other gasses, which are the building blocks of new stars.

[brush]

4. Thanks. The images are so spectacular.

And the vastness is just mind blowing. At the link that image with the columns is referred to as a "small section" of a larger image...small being thousands of light years.

Just mind blowing.

[SCantiGOP]

5. My favorite Carl Sagan quote:

The universe is not stranger than we imagine. It is stranger than we can imagine.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Be careful letting kids see those images

Those galaxies might be gay.

Lol.

Very cool regardless.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. Yep. Galaxies merge.

According to My Son The Astronomer, evidence that we've already merged with other galaxies is that in Milky Way, there are groups of stars travelling in a different direction from the stars around them.

And eventually, all of the galaxies in our local cluster will merge into one truly enormous galaxy. By that time, all other galaxies will be so far away that no light from them will be able to reach us, and astronomers in that far-off future will have no way of figuring out how old the Universe is, or how it formed, or any of those basic things we currently have a good understanding of.