The star-forming region Sagittarius C (Sgr C) is about 300 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. This NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image from JWST reveals an estimated 500,000 stars in Sgr C. A large region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, contains intriguing needle-like structures that lack any uniform orientation.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / and S. Crowe (University of Virginia)
This video pans across an image of the barred spiral galaxy M83 as seen by the MIRI instrument aboard JWST. A few days ago I posted a similar video of M83 as seen by JWST’s NIRCam.
Video Credits: ESA / NASA / CSA / A. Adamo (Stockholm University) /FEAST JWST team / N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb)
Music: Stellardrone—Twilight
Creative Commons Attribution License
Video Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Danielle Kirshenblat (STScI)
Video Credit: ESA / NASA / CSA / A. Adamo (Stockholm University) / FEAST JWST team / N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb)
Music: Stellardrone—The Edge of Forever
Creative Commons Attribution License
Video Credit: NASA
This image of Jupiter taken by JWST’s NIRCam shows interesting details visible in infrared light. In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are very high-altitude cloud tops in convective storms. Auroras (red) extend to higher altitudes above both the planet’s poles of the planet, but the dark ribbons north of the equator are regions with little cloud cover.
Image Credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country) / I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley) / T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris) / L. Fletcher (University of Leicester) / M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) / J. DePasquale (STScI)
MIRI is the Mid-Infrared Instrument aboard JWST. This false color MIRI image of NGC 346 traces emission from cool gas and dust. Silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons show up in blue. The more diffuse red emission are from warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars in the heart of the region.This image includes 7.7-micron light shown in blue, 10 microns in cyan, 11.3 microns in green, 15 microns in yellow, and 21 microns in red.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / N. Habel (JPL).
Image Processing: P. Kavanagh (Maynooth University).
Video Credit: STScI
This JWST’s near-infrared view of Herbig-Haro 211 reveals exquisite detail of the outflow of a young star. Herbig-Haro objects are formed when high speed stellar winds or jets of gas flowing from newborn stars produce shock waves as they collide with nearby gas and dust.
The bow shocks in this image are moving to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) powered by the narrow bipolar jets from the star. Molecules excited by the turbulent conditions, including hydrogen, carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide, glow in infrared light.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Tom Ray (Dublin)
Video Credit: NASA
JWST’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this detailed image of SN 1987A, the remnant of supernova 1987A). The material ejected from the supernova in the center of the remnant forms a keyhole shape. The faint crescents just outside the center were newly discovered by JWST.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / M. Matsuura (Cardiff University) / R. Arendt (GSFC & UMBCy) / C. Fransson
JWST has turned its IR vision on Neptune. The eight planet’s dark and ghostly appearance is caused by atmospheric methane absorbing infrared light. High clouds above most of Neptune’s absorbing methane easily stand out in this image. Because its surface is coated with frozen nitrogen, Neptune’s largest moon Triton (in the upper left) is brighter in than Neptune in reflected IR sunlight. It’s surrounded by JWST’s characteristic diffraction spikes.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI
Video Credit: NASA
A pair of young stars lie at the center of the prominent reddish diffraction spikes in this NIRcam image from JWST. Energetic jets of gas from HH (Herbig-Haro) 46/47 extend for over a light-year though a dark nebula that hides the stars when viewed with visible light. JWST’s infrared vision allows a deeper view.
Image Credit:NASA / ESA / CSA
Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA released the image of Rho Ophiuchi, the closest star formation region to Earth, as the First Anniversary image for JWST. You can read about it here.
Image Credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
NGC 3256 is the distorted galaxy formed by the collision of two spiral galaxies. This video wipes between Hubble and JWST images.
Video Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA
On 25 June, the James Webb Space Telescope took its first near-infrared observations of Saturn. Saturn is extremely dark in the infrared light the NIRCam instrument because methane absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere, but the icy rings are reflective and relatively bright.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI
This video looks into a part of the Orion Nebula as seen in visible light by Hubble and wipes to a false color image of an infrared view as seen by JWST.
Video Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: Dr. Becky
This infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope was taken for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey,( aka JADES) program. It peers into a portion of an area of the sky well studied by other observatories known as GOODS-South. This is a very low-resolution version of the image. More than 45,000 galaxies are visible the high-resolution version found here.
Credits—
Image:NASA / ESA / CSA / Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz) / Ben Johnson (CfA) / Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge) / Marcia Rieke (University of Arizona) / Daniel Eisenstein (CfA)
Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Yes, this really is an image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068. It’s a composite from two of the JWST’s instruments, MIRI and NIRCam, which see in infrared rather than visible light. The tendrils of gas and stars belong to the galaxy, and its bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image.
Image Credits: ESA / NASA / CSA / J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team
Video Credit: NASA
As the two spiral galaxies in Apr 220 collide, they’re glowing in infrared with the light of more than a trillion suns. The merger of the galaxies has ignited a tremendous burst of star birth, and each galactic core is surrounded by a star-forming ring JWST has captured in infrared.
Image Credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
These two images are of the same part of the sky. The image on the left is from the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field observation. JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera took the image on the right. Hubble’s observation with its Wide Field Camera 3, required an exposure time of 11.3 days. The JWST image only took 0.83 days. Several areas within the Webb image reveal previously invisible, red galaxies. You can download the full resolution from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph DePasquale (STScI).
