The Penguin and the Egg: NASA Releases Stunning Images of Two Galaxies Merging
The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released two images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of two galaxies, one nicknamed the Penguin and the other the Egg, in the process of merging like a cosmic ballet dance, as the American agency celebrates the two-year anniversary since unveiling the first scientific results from the space telescope.
Webb was launched into space in 2021 and began collecting data the following year. The space telescope has reshaped our understanding of the early stages of the universe by capturing stunning images, according to Reuters.
The two galaxies captured in the images are located 326 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, which is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).
Jane Rigby, the principal scientist for the Webb project at NASA, said, “We see two galaxies, each containing a collection of billions of stars. The galaxies are in the process of merging. This is a common way for galaxies, including our own, to grow over time, evolving from small galaxies, like those Webb has discovered shortly after the Big Bang, to mature galaxies like our Milky Way.”
Since Webb began its operations, the telescope has observed galaxies teeming with stars that formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang, which initiated the universe about 13.8 billion years ago.
The two merging galaxies are collectively known as Arp 142. They appear in the images amid a haze of a mixture of stars and gas in the midst of their slow merger.
The Penguin galaxy is so named because its shape, from the telescope’s angle, resembles that of the flightless bird, including a beak-like region. This galaxy is officially called NGC 2936. It is a spiral galaxy, now slightly distorted. The Egg galaxy is also named according to its shape and is officially known as NGC 2937. It is a compact, elliptical galaxy. Together, they suggest a penguin guarding its egg.
NASA states that their interaction began between 25 and 75 million years ago, and they are expected to become a single galaxy several hundred million years from now.
Webb has discovered the oldest known galaxies and has illuminated insights in fields such as the formation of planets outside our solar system and the nature of star-forming regions in the universe.
Mark Clampin, director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters, said, “This mission has allowed us to look at the farthest galaxies ever observed and understand the very early stages of the universe in a new way… For example, with Webb, we found that these very early galaxies were much more massive and luminous than we expected, raising the question: how did they grow so big so fast?”
Webb was designed to be more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which is also still operational. Webb primarily observes the universe in the infrared spectrum, whereas Hubble observed the universe mainly in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.
Clampin said, “Webb is the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space. It specializes in capturing infrared light, wavelengths longer than what our eyes can see. Thanks to its incredible sensitivity to these wavelengths, we have been able to look back at the early stages of the universe in a way that previous missions could not, see through the dust and gas at the heart of star formation, and examine the composition of atmospheres outside the solar system like never before.”
He added that looking to the future, “some of Webb’s most exciting discoveries will be things we haven’t even thought of yet.”
