The James Webb Space Telescope’s hits just keep coming—and the latest gets an assist from an old friend. On Monday, NASA scientists unveiled a new photo taken by Webb of M74, a spiral galaxy 32 million light-years away, composed of about 100 billion stars.
Its gargantuan spiral arms are an incredible sight to behold, but its low brightness has made it a challenge for astronomers to study—hence the reason it’s nicknamed the Phantom Galaxy. That’s why Webb is such a prime instrument for studying M74: It specializes in observing the universe in infrared and near-infrared wavelengths.
The latest image, to be clear, isn’t solely the work of Webb. It’s a composite of observations taken by Webb as well as the Hubble Space Telescope—the “predecessor” to Webb that is still extremely adept at looking at objects in visible light and has been invaluable to astronomy over the last three decades.
The new photo is more than just pretty eye candy for people. It helps highlight more of M74’s structural elements, including which stars are heavier and older (pictured in cyan and green) and which are lighter and younger (orange). We might soon need to give the Phantom Galaxy a new moniker.
