James Webb and Hubble space telescope images combined (credit: JPL/NASA, ESA, CSA, STSci)
Combined images captured by the Webb and Hubble space telescopes, show two spiral galaxies more than million miles distant, appear like bloodshot eyes. According to Jet Propulsion Laboratory that released the paired photographs, the galaxies have only grazed each other so far. The smaller galaxy on the left (IC-2163), began slowing to creep behind the larger spiral on the right (NGC-2207) millions of years ago. The macabre, almost Halloween-like, colors represent a combination of the infrared photograph captured by the sensors on the Webb Space Telescope sensors with the visible and ultraviolet light seen by the cameras on its predecessor, the Hubble.
Hubble’s UV/visible-light IC-2163 & NGC-2207 blue arms & orange cores left. Webb's IR view of dust & arms in white (right), 10-31-24 (credit: JPL/NASA, ESA, CSA, STSci)
Evidence of their 'scraping' by each other is visible in the shock fronts, where galactic material may have slammed together and represented by lines in red which cause the galaxies’ to seem to be bulging with vein-like arms.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Their first pass have also distorted the galaxies spiraling arms, pulling them to become extended in places. The diffuse, tiny arms between IC 2163’s core and its far left may show this gravitational affect. Other tendrils look like they are hanging between the galaxies’ cores. Another extension 'drifts' off the larger galaxy, forming a thin, semi-transparent arm that almost leaves the image.
NASA states that both galaxies are active "stellar nurseries" forming new stars at high rates producing the two dozen the size of our Sun each year. By comparison, the Milky Way galaxy only forms two or three new Sun-like stars every year. Both galaxies experienced supernovae in past decades which may have cleared space in their arms by rearranging and mixing the gas and dust that later cooled that allowed even more new stars to be born.
NASA produced a video animation of the galactic process that the space telescopes have been observing. WHB