Pic of the Week: Galactic Emoji

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A composite image of Arp 107.(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

This week’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows two colliding galaxies creating a unique image from the telescope’s viewpoint.

Here is more information about the image from NASA:

Smile for the camera! An interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright “eyes” and the wide semicircular “smile.” The region has been observed before in infrared by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005, however NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope displays it in much higher resolution. This image is a composite, combining observations from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera)...Webb has captured these galaxies in the process of merging, which will take hundreds of millions of years. As the two galaxies rebuild after the chaos of their collision, Arp 107 may lose its smile, but it will inevitably turn into something just as interesting for future astronomers to study. Arp 107 is located 465 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor.