The James Webb Space Telescope, which is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus, has been in operation for two years, constantly sending back data that led to astonishing discoveries and stunning images of the universe.
To mark the occasion, officials published images of “the Penguin and the Egg,” two intertwined galaxies about 326 million light-years from Earth.
The images released today show a distorted spiral galaxy, nicknamed the “Penguin” because it looks like it has a penguin’s beak, eye, and chest or tail, and an elliptical galaxy, nicknamed the “Egg.”
The JWST specializes in capturing infrared light, which human eyes cannot see. The telescope’s images show the two galaxies are “joined by a haze represented in blue that is a mix of stars and gas, a result of their mingling,” according to the telescope institute.
The two galaxies first passed each other between 25 million and 75 million years ago, officials said. They will continue to “shimmy and sway” around each other before merging into a single galaxy in hundreds of millions of years.
Officials estimate the two galaxies are about 100,000 light-years apart, which is very close on astronomical terms. The Milky Way Galaxy (where we live) and our closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, are about 2.5 million light-years apart and won’t interact for about 4 billion years.
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