NASA / ESA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed the windings arms of grand-design spiral galaxy M51, classified as NGC 5194, located 27 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. The dark red regions you see in this image trace the filamentary warm dust permeating the medium of the galaxy, while the orange and yellow reveal the regions of ionized gas by the recently formed star clusters.
M51’s neighbor, dwarf galaxy NGC 5195, has a gravitational influence that is thought to be partially responsible for the galaxy’s prominent and distinct spiral arms. This Webb observation is just one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers (FEAST). These observations were designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside of our own galaxy.
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Before Webb became operative, other observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in the Chilean desert and Hubble have given us a glimpse of star formation either at the onset (tracing the dense gas and dust clouds where stars will form) or after the stars have destroyed with their energy their natal gas and dust clouds. Webb is opening a new window into the early stages of star formation and stellar light, as well as the energy reprocessing of gas and dust,” said the ESA.
