Galaxy just bigger than Milky Way looks ghostly in Webb's latest pictures
The James Webb Space Telescope has beamed back extremely detailed images of the galaxy, which is just bigger than our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy was previously seen by the Hubble and appeared like a spiral feature with arms rotating outwards.
When the James Webb Telescope looked at IC 5332, it saw the spiral galaxy in unprecedented detail with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). The galaxy lies over 29 million light-years from Earth, and has a diameter of roughly 66 000 light-years, making it a little larger than the Milky Way.
According to the European Space Agency, the galaxy is notable for being almost perfectly face-on with respect to Earth, allowing us to admire the symmetrical sweep of its spiral arms.
The world's most powerful observatory used the Mid-InfraRed Instrument which is sensitive to the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The instrument operates 33 degrees Celcius below the rest of the observatory at the frosty temperature of 266 degrees Celcius. "MIRI is the first instrument that delivers mid-infrared images that are sharp enough to be easily matched to Hubble's view at shorter wavelengths," ESA, which has developed the instrument with Nasa said in a release with the comparative images of the galaxy.
The Webb team has said that MIRI requires a frigid environment in order for its highly specialized detectors to function correctly, and it has a dedicated active cooling system to ensure that its detectors are kept at the correct temperature.
"MIRI is the first instrument that delivers mid-infrared images that are sharp enough to be easily matched to Hubble's view at shorter wavelengths," ESA, which has developed the instrument with Nasa said in a release with the comparative images of the galaxy.
The Webb team has said that MIRI requires a frigid environment in order for its highly specialized detectors to function correctly, and it has a dedicated active cooling system to ensure that its detectors are kept at the correct temperature.
While the Hubble images showed dark regions that seemed to separate the spiral arms, Webb's image shows more of a continual tangle of structures that echo the spiral arms' shape. Astronomers said that this difference is due to the presence of dusty regions in the galaxy.
"Dusty regions can be identified easily in the Hubble image as the darker regions that much of the galaxy's ultraviolet and visible light has not been able to travel through. Those same dusty regions are no longer dark in the Webb image, however, as the mid-infrared light from the galaxy has been able to pass through them," ESA added.
The telescope has remained busy, nearly 15,00,000 kilometers away from Earth-observing and finding clues to the birth of the universe.
