This summer, our newest massive telescope showed us familiar galaxies in totally unfamiliar ways. In one tweet, I saw the galaxy M74 [NGC 628] described as an Eldrich Horror, and I have to say I can’t disagree.
This bizarre spiral of darkness traces out the warm gas in an otherwise familiar galaxy.
When we look at M74 in normal light, we see stars and hot gas, but JWST is blind to all those hot objects. Instead, we see the lacy pattern formed by stellar winds and supernovae in cool gas.
JWST also looked at the southern spiral NGC 7496 and revealed what might be mistaken for the eye of Sauron.
But again, it’s just a galaxy with all the hot objects’ lights turned off.
And before you start thinking JWST only looks at planets and galaxies, here is the star Wolf Rayet 140. This is a massive star in a binary system that is exhaling dust. It’s thought that the rings are formed by the gravity of the two stars herding the gas into these shells.
New science papers are still to come. I expect we’ll start seeing research papers around January and maybe even before. I, for one, can’t wait to read them and share the results with you.
More Information
NASA press release
