James Webb Space Telescope witnesses a ‘smiling’ galactic collision (images)

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have imaged a surprisingly merry-looking collision between galaxies.

The merger of the large spiral galaxy and the smaller elliptical galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, is located around 465 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaged Arp 107 using its NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and its MIRI (Mid InfraRed Instrument) cameras. With these, the JWST spotted a near-transparent white “bridge” of stars that has been ripped from both galaxies. Star-forming regions of gas and dust are represented in orange and red, together forming a smiley face among the stars.

An image of Arp 107 showing the sale of the galactic collision and is orientation from north to south in the night sky (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

The spiral galaxy component of this merger is classed as a Seyfert galaxy, one of the largest groups of so-called “active” galaxies that emit large amounts of energy from their centers. The brightest of these galaxies possess energetic regions dominated by feeding supermassive black holes called “quasars.”

Named after American astronomer Carl K. Seyfert, Seyfert galaxies tend to be dimmer than quasar-hosting galaxies. That means Seyfert galaxies are actually the easier active galaxies to study when it comes to using low-energy light like the infrared light the JWST uses to observe the cosmos.

A pair of interacting galaxies. The larger of the two galaxies is slightly right of centre, and is composed of a bright, white centre and a ring of blue, gaseous filaments. The centre of this galaxy shows Webb’s eight-pronged diffraction pattern. There are three filaments of gas and dust moving from the ring toward the centre. At the top left of the ring is a noticeable gap, bordered by two large, blue pockets of dust and gas. The smaller galaxy is made of hazy, light blue gas and dust. Many red, green, blue, and yellow galaxies are spread throughout, with some being hazier in composition and others having more defined spiral patterns — The colliding galaxies of Arp 107, this time seen by the JWST’s MIRI instrument alone. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

There are many similarities between Arp 107 and another set of interacting galaxies seen by the JWST, the Cartwheel Galaxy. However, Arp 107 doesn’t exactly look like the Cartwheel Galaxy. This is because the smaller elliptical galaxy in Arp 107 was off-center when it collided with the larger spiral galaxy.

As a result, the spiral galaxy component of Arp 107 has managed to retain most of its structure apart from its distinctive spiral arms, which have been almost completely obliterated.