The Vortex Galaxy, also known as M51, is one of the best-known objects in the night sky. It is close enough and prominent enough in the northern sky that amateur astronomers have been sharing stunning photographs of it for decades.

But you've never seen anything like it: M51 as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

This image, which includes data from the telescope's NIRCam and MIRI instruments, shows incredible detail and reveals hidden features between the spiral arms.

The galaxy is called the Vortex because of its swirling structure, which resembles water swirling around a channel. Like other large-design spiral galaxies, the twisting spiral arms are clearly visible.

Integrated data from JWST's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveal hot dust condensed along the spiral arms, which appear as dark red regions.

The bright areas along the arms are regions of star formation descending towards the blue and white central core.

The orange and yellow areas show regions of ionised gas created by recently formed star clusters.

Later, JWST reveals that inside the arms are cavernous black bubbles that allow us to almost see distant stars through the galaxy's gas and dust like never before.

The Vortex Galaxy is located 31 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.

In other images, such as this one from the Hubble Space Telescope, a small, yellowish galaxy can be seen at the outermost end of one of the arms of the Vortex. This is NGC 5195, and the two galaxies are interacting.

Although much smaller than the Vortex, the gravitational influence of NGC 5195 is thought to be partly responsible for the prominent and distinct spiral arms of the Vortex.

This JWST observation of M51 was carried out as part of a series of observations called Feedback in Evolving Extragalactic Star Clusters, or FEAST.

According to ESA, FEAST observations are "designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Stellar feedback is a term used to describe the flow of energy from stars to their forming environments and is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form. Scientists say that understanding stellar feedback is vital for building accurate universal models of star formation.

 

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/