James Webb Telescope captures stunning images of 19 spiral galaxies

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured stunning, remarkably detailed images of 19 spiral galaxies located relatively close to the Milky Way, providing new clues about star formation, as well as the structure and evolution of galaxies.

A mosaic of 19 JWST images of spiral galaxies. (Image: space.com)

These impressive images were released on January 29 by a team of scientists from the High Angular Resolution Physics in Nearby Galaxies (PHANGS) project, which combined data from several major observatories. The nearest of the 19 galaxies is called NGC5068 , which is about 15 million light-years away, while the farthest galaxy is NGC1365 , which is about 60 million light-years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, equivalent to 9,500 billion kilometers.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched in 2021 and began collecting data in 2022. The images it captured have helped reshape our understanding of the early universe and captured some amazing images of the cosmos.

Among galaxies, the most common type is the spiral galaxy, which resembles giant pinwheels. Our Milky Way is one such galaxy, but it is unique in that it contains the Sun.

The images were captured by the James Webb Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Medium-Range Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The data shows about 100,000 star clusters and millions or perhaps billions of individual stars in the Milky Way.

"These data are important because they give us new insight into the earliest stages of star formation," said astronomer Thomas Williams of the University of Oxford, who led the team that processed the data on the images .

Not only that, the images above also allow scientists to understand for the first time in detail the structure of the clouds of dust and gas from which stars and planets form in galaxies.

"These images are not only aesthetically impressive, but also tell a story about the cycle of star formation and feedback, which is the energy and momentum released by young stars into interstellar space," said astronomer Janice Lee of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore , US .