Photo: NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Facebook

KATHMANDU,

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the change of Cartwheel Galaxy that has resulted after a high speed collision which occurred about 440 million years ago, along with two neighboring galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies.

According to reports, the near and mid-infrared composite image has revealed new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. The image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.

According to NASA, The Cartwheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light years away in the Sculptor constellation, is a rare sight. The collision most notably affected the galaxy’s shape and structure. The Cartwheel Galaxy sports two rings – a bright inner ring and a surrounding, colorful ring. These two rings expand outwards from the center of the collision, like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it. Because of these distinctive features, astronomers call this a “ring galaxy,” a structure less common than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.

The bright core contains a tremendous amount of hot dust with the brightest areas being the home to gigantic young star clusters. On the other hand, the outer ring, which has expanded for about 440 million years, is dominated by star formation and supernovas. As this ring expands, it plows into surrounding gas and triggers star formation.

Moreover, NASA states that Webb’s observations underscore that the Cartwheel is in a very transitory stage. The galaxy, which was presumably a normal spiral galaxy like the Milky Way before its collision, will continue to transform. While Webb gives us a snapshot of the current state of the Cartwheel, it also provides insight into what happened to this galaxy in the past and how it will evolve in the future.