Â鶹´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Webb telescope witnesses dazzling burst of star formation

Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Share

A brilliant starburst feature shines in the latest image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The space observatory captured a bright burst of star formation triggered by two spiral galaxies crashing into one another.

The colliding galaxies, known collectively as Arp 220, generated an infrared glow that contains the light of more than 1 trillion suns. For comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a luminosity that is the equivalent of about 10 billion suns.

The scintillating light show from the ultra-luminous infrared galaxy is the spiked starburst feature at the center of the new Webb image, which was released on Monday.

The telescope's Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument captured the composite image.

Arp 220 is located 250 million light-years away in the Serpens constellation, and it's the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.

These two galaxies began colliding about 700 million years ago, and as the gas and dust combined, a tremendous flare of star birth began.

There are around 200 massive star clusters contained in a dusty region that stretches 5,000 light-years across, which is about 5% of the Milky Way's diameter. Yet there is enough gas in this small region, astronomically speaking, to replace all of the gas in the entire Milky Way.

Previous observations of this star-packed region from other telescopes have observed different features. Radio telescopes saw 100 supernova remnants within an area of less than 500 light-years, while the Hubble Space Telescope documented the cores of the two original galaxies existing 1,200 light-years apart.

Each galactic core has a rotating star-forming ring that releases the bright infrared light that the powerful Webb telescope is capable of viewing in great detail. This brilliant luminosity creates the diffraction spikes, or starburst feature witnessed by Webb.

The new Webb image also reveals tails, or material streaming away from the galaxies due to gravity, in blue, to indicate activity as the galaxies continue to collide. Meanwhile, reddish-orange streams and filaments of organic material can be seen across the merging galaxies.

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

W5 INVESTIGATES

W5 INVESTIGATES Jungle crackdown: Shutting down a treacherous narco migrant pipeline

This week, Avery Haines follows migrants' harrowing journeys across the Darien Gap. Strict new rules to stem the flood of migrants through the notorious stretch of dense jungle appear to be working, but advocates fear it could backfire.

A pedestrian has died after reportedly getting struck by an OPP cruiser in Bala early Sunday morning.

British Columbia saw a rare unanimous vote in its legislature in October 2019, when members passed a law adopting the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, setting out standards including free, prior and informed consent for actions affecting them.

Local Spotlight

A tale about a taxicab hauling gold and sinking through the ice on Larder Lake, Ont., in December 1937 has captivated a man from that town for decades.

When a group of B.C. filmmakers set out on a small fishing boat near Powell River last week, they hoped to capture some video for a documentary on humpback whales. What happened next blew their minds.

A pizza chain in Edmonton claims to have the world's largest deliverable pizza.

Sarah McLachlan is returning to her hometown of Halifax in November.

Wayne MacKay is still playing basketball twice at Mount Allison University at 87 years old.

A man from a small rural Alberta town is making music that makes people laugh.

An Indigenous artist has a buyer-beware warning ahead of Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Police are looking to the public for help after thieves broke into a Lethbridge ice creamery, stealing from the store.

An ordinary day on the job delivering mail in East Elmwood quickly turned dramatic for Canada Post letter carrier Jared Plourde. A woman on his route was calling out in distress.