James Webb Space Telescope witnesses a 'smiling' galactic collision (images)

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have imaged a surprisingly merry-looking collision between galaxies.

The merger of the large spiral galaxy and the smaller elliptical galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, is located around 465 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaged Arp 107 using its NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and its MIRI (Mid InfraRed Instrument) cameras. With these, the JWST spotted a near-transparent white "bridge" of stars that has been ripped from both galaxies. Star-forming regions of gas and dust are represented in orange and red, together forming a smiley face among the stars.

A pair of interacting galaxies. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points in the 10 o’clock direction. The east arrow points toward 6 o’clock. At the lower right is a scale bar labelled in light-years. The length of the scale bar is one-sixth the total width of the image. Below the image is a colour key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light colour is assigned to each filter. From left to right, the NIRCam filters are: F090W is blue; F150W is blue; F200W is green; F277W is green; F356W is red; and F444W is red. From left to right, the MIRI filters are: F770W is yellow; F1000W is orange; and F1500W is red. — An image of Arp 107 showing the sale of the galactic collision and is orientation from north to south in the night sky (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

The spiral galaxy component of this merger is classed as a Seyfert galaxy, one of the largest groups of so-called "active" galaxies that emit large amounts of energy from their centers. The brightest of these galaxies possess energetic regions dominated by feeding supermassive black holes called "quasars."

Named after American astronomer Carl K. Seyfert, Seyfert galaxies tend to be dimmer than quasar-hosting galaxies. That means Seyfert galaxies are actually the easier active galaxies to study when it comes to using low-energy light like the infrared light the JWST uses to observe the cosmos.

A pair of interacting galaxies. The larger of the two galaxies is slightly right of centre, and is composed of a bright, white centre and a ring of blue, gaseous filaments. The centre of this galaxy shows Webb’s eight-pronged diffraction pattern. There are three filaments of gas and dust moving from the ring toward the centre. At the top left of the ring is a noticeable gap, bordered by two large, blue pockets of dust and gas. The smaller galaxy is made of hazy, light blue gas and dust. Many red, green, blue, and yellow galaxies are spread throughout, with some being hazier in composition and others having more defined spiral patterns — The colliding galaxies of Arp 107, this time seen by the JWST's MIRI instrument alone. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

There are many similarities between Arp 107 and another set of interacting galaxies seen by the JWST, the Cartwheel Galaxy. However, Arp 107 doesn't exactly look like the Cartwheel Galaxy. This is because the smaller elliptical galaxy in Arp 107 was off-center when it collided with the larger spiral galaxy.

As a result, the spiral galaxy component of Arp 107 has managed to retain most of its structure apart from its distinctive spiral arms, which have been almost completely obliterated.

James Webb Space Telelscope's MIRI camera reveals areas rich in hydrocarbons and silicate dust. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

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Collisions between galaxies like Arp 107 can be a double-edged sword when it comes to star formation. In galaxies that aren't actively forming stars, mergers can deliver new reservoirs of gas, the building blocks of star formation, and compress this gas into the dense state needed to birth stellar bodies.

On the flipside of this, the JWST has seen that collisions can disperse gas which can deprive galaxies of the material they need to form new stars.

The Arp 107 collision witnessed by the JWST is expected to take hundreds of millions of years to complete. When it is finished, the two galaxies will have created a larger, irregularly shaped galaxy.

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Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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