Capturing All That Glitters in Galaxies with NASA’s Webb

January 19, 2022 10:00AM (EST)Release ID: 2022-007
Barred spiral galaxy with bright red regions of star formation and dust illuminated in magenta

Summary

An international research team will survey the stars, star clusters, and dust that lie within 19 nearby galaxies.

To understand galaxies, you have to understand how stars form. Over 100 researchers from around the world have collaborated to bring together observations of nearby spiral galaxies taken with the world’s most powerful radio, visible, and ultraviolet telescopes – and will soon add a full suite of high-resolution infrared images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. With this groundbreaking data set, astronomers will be able to study stars as they start to form within dark, dusty gas clouds, untangle when those infant stars blow away that gas and dust, and identify more mature stars that are puffing off layers of gas and dust – all for the first time in a diverse set of spiral galaxies.

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