This composite view of “the Penguin and the Egg,” known as Arp 142, shows two interacting galaxies, one gas-poor elliptical and one (former) gas-rich spiral, in wavelength ranging from 0.9 to 15 microns. In infrared light, perhaps the “Penguin” looks more like a seahorse. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
For its 2-year science anniversary, JWST has revealed unprecedented details in “the Penguin and the Egg.” Here are the surprises inside.
This view showcases the difference between the JWST’s NIRCam and MIRI views, with NIRCam’s being far sharper and revealing more objects. The MIRI view reveals dusty details that no other wavelength can, however, including the abundance and composition of dust inside, which relates to a galaxy’s star-forming and life-forming potentials. In the MIRI view, red = gas-rich; blue = gas-poor (but still present); green = organic molecules, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
Overlaid with (older) Hubble data, the JWST NIRCam image of the Southern Ring Nebula is clearly superior in a variety of ways: resolution, the details revealed, the extent of the outer gas, etc. It truly is a spectacular reveal of how stars like the Sun end their lives, as well as how, very slightly, the nebula has expanded in between the acquisition of the Hubble and JWST images. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
This image is the first mid-infrared image of Stephan’s Quintet ever taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The galaxy at the topmost-right of the image displays a brilliant spikey pattern: evidence of a supermassive black hole that had never been revealed prior. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
This image of the dusty debris disk surrounding the young star Fomalhaut is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). It reveals three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star. The inner belts — which had never been seen before — were revealed by Webb for the first time. Labels at left indicate the individual features. At right, a great dust cloud is highlighted and pullouts show it in two infrared wavelengths: 23 and 25.5 microns. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA; Processing: A. Gáspár (University of Arizona) &Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
