Galaxies

The galaxy ESO 415-19 (Image ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)

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An image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy ESO 415-19 and its long arms, making it a decidedly unusual spiral galaxy. It’s a spiral galaxy but was included in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies due to the extraordinary extension of its arms. So far, no other traces of the cosmic interaction that caused this anomaly in ESO 415-19 have been found but its peculiarity made it an interesting object of observation with Hubble and other instruments. For publication, photos taken with Hubble’s ACS instrument were combined with others captured with the DECam camera on the Victor M. Blanco telescope.

The galaxies RS13 and RS14 as they appeared in images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope and as they appear in the image captured by Webb

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the identification of a population of rare red spiral galaxies in the SMACS J0723.3-7327 galaxy cluster. A team of researchers used observations conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope to find details of these galaxies which are estimated to date back to when the universe was about two to three billion years old.

The unprecedented detail captured by Webb helps to make progress in understanding the processes taking place in galaxies of various ages and understand why some appear red. Finding several very old ones suggests that over 10 billion years ago, red galaxies were more common.

Infographic of the primordial galaxies observed with the James Webb Space Telescope

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Two articles that have yet to pass the peer-review phase report some results of observations of primordial galaxies conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope within the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program which has precisely the aim of studying the oldest and faintest galaxies. A team of astronomers used Webb’s NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments to determine the distances of four galaxies we see as they were less than 400 million years after the Big Bang using a spectroscopic analysis of their light.

HIPASS J1131–31 / Peekaboo, magnified in the inset (Image Science: NASA, ESA, Igor Karachentsev (SAO RAS) image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports a study of a dwarf galaxy cataloged as HIPASS J1131–31 that is relatively close but has the characteristics of a primordial galaxy. A team of researchers combined observations from various ground-based and space telescopes to confirm its nature, including the Hubble Space Telescope. They nicknamed it Peekaboo because it peeks out from behind a bright star that hid it for a long time and made it difficult to identify. It’s a very small galaxy but its primordial characteristics make it interesting for astronomers.

The SMACS-J0723.3-7327 galaxy cluster seen by the James Webb Space Telescope

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of the most complete analysis of the so-called intracluster light conducted so far. Mireia Montes and Ignacio Trujillo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the SMACS-J0723.3-7327 galaxy cluster. In particular, they exploited the NIRCam instrument to detect intracluster light, which is extremely dim but useful to study galaxy clusters in ways other than visible light observations. These studies are also useful for understanding the distribution of dark matter.