A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows one of the universe’s most dramatic events: the colliding of two galaxies. The pair, known as Arp 107, are located located 465 million light-years away and have been pulled into strange shapes by the gravitational forces of the interaction, but this isn’t a purely destructive process. The collision is also creating new stars as young stars are born in swirling clouds of dust and gas.
The image above is a composite, bringing together data from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). These two instruments operate in different parts of the infrared, so they can pick up on different processes. The data collected in the near-infrared range is seen in white, highlighting older stars and the band of gas running between the two galaxies. The mid-infrared data is shown in orange and red, highlighting busy regions of star formation, with bright young stars putting out large amounts of radiation.
If you look at just the MIRI data, below, you can see features like the glow of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy to the right. Although the black hole itself can’t be seen directly, the swirling dust and gas around its event horizon heats up as it moves and glows brightly.
The swirls of star formation give this image a similar look to the Cartwheel Galaxy, which is also a galaxy undergoing an interaction. These interactions, or collisions, can reshape galaxies and have a complex relationship with the rate of star formation.
“The collision isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Webb scientists write. “Although there was much star formation occurring before, collisions between galaxies can compress gas, improving the conditions needed for more stars to form. On the other hand, as Webb reveals, collisions also disperse a lot of gas, potentially depriving new stars of the material they need to form.”
The Arp 107 pair will continue merging over hundreds of millions of years, eventually becoming one singular galaxy.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.