The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the result of a collision between two galaxies that took place half a billion years ago, space.com reports.
What is known
As a result of the collision of two galaxies 500 million years ago, a new galaxy was born. It is called NGC 3256 and is located at a distance of about 120 million light-years from our planet. Scientists believe that observing it will allow them to learn more about how galaxies and supermassive black holes located in their centers merge.
The collision started the process of active star formation. This is due to the combination of clouds of space dust and gas. At the same time, the existing stars do not collide with each other due to the vast distances involved.
In the photo, which was taken by a space telescope, scientists marked in red the areas where star formation is most intense. Stars emit infrared light, making the galaxy glow. This makes NGC 3256 an ideal target for the James Webb Telescope, which observes objects in the universe in the infrared.
The image also shows entire strings of stars. They were torn from their galaxies by gravitational interaction. The image of NGC 3256 was taken by the space observatory using data from the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Imager (MIRI).
