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NASA’s Webb Space Telescope will be Capturing Distant Galaxies

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Published on: January 24, 2022,

A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter. Over 100 researchers from the world have collaborated to bring together observations of nearby spiral galaxies that will be taken from NASA’s James Webb Telescope. With this astronomers will be able to study stars as they start to form within dark, dusty gas clouds.

 

Spirals are some of the most captivating shapes in the universe. Seeing spirals on cosmic scales a question arises how do stars and star clusters form? Within the first year of operations NASA’s James Webb Telescope will help researchers complete a more detailed sketch of stellar life cycle with high resolution infrared images of 19 galaxies. The telescope will also provide a few key “puzzle” pieces that were missing until now. “JWST touches on so many different phases of the stellar life cycle – all in tremendous resolution,” said Janice Lee, Gemini Observatory chief scientist at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona

 

Lee is joined by David Thilker of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Kathryn Kreckel of Heidelberg University in Germany, and 40 additional members of the multi-wavelength survey program known as PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS).

 

PHANGS will bring together more than 100 international experts to study star formation from beginning to end. They are targeting galaxies that can be seen on from Earth that are on average 50 million light years ago

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