Science & Technology
Cartwheel Galaxy’s dusty glory captured by James Webb space telescope
New photos from the James Webb Space Telescope continue to unlock the beauty of the universe in new infrared light and with the latest batch of images, the Cartwheel Galaxy is seen in all its sparkly, dusty glory.
The Cartwheel Galaxy is 500 million light years away. Its 150,000 lightyear diameter is larger than the Milky Way’s 100,000. But it’s a ring galaxy instead of a spiral galaxy, like the others in the photo and our own, the Nerdist reported.
The details are mesmerizing, especially the spokes of the wheel connecting the inner and outer rings.
The interesting shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy is the result of a collision between it and another galaxy. When a small galaxy passes through a larger one, stars rarely collide. But their gravitational pulls disrupt each other and, in this case, affect the structure of the whole galaxy, the Nerdist reported.
In the bright inner ring are clusters of young stars. The outer ring is a star nursery. As it expands and plows through space, new stars begin to form.
