The U.S. Space Program is as American as Apple Pie

Enjoy cosmic fireworks courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope this Independence Day.

“The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 dominates this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. This Milky Way-sized galaxy lies about 120 million light-years away in the constellation Vela, and is a denizen of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster.” (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans)

“NGC 3256 may seem peaceful, a swirl of tightly entwined spiral arms set in a hazy cloud of light, but this image shows the aftermath of an ancient cosmic clash,” says NASA of the above image, one of the latest offerings of the James Webb Space Telescope. “This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two equally massive spiral galaxies which astronomers estimate to have met around 500 million years ago.”

“If you were asked to picture a galaxy collision, you might picture stars careening into one another with catastrophically explosive results,” NASA explains of Webb’s latest image. “In reality, the spaces between the stars in a galaxy are vast; when galaxies collide, their clouds of stars pass through one another and mingle like two clouds of smoke. The gas and dust in colliding galaxies does interact, however, and with spectacular results. The galactic collision that created NGC 3256 triggered a luminous burst of star formation that can be seen in the brightest portions of this image. These infant stars shine most brightly at infrared wavelengths, light which can penetrate through obscuring dust in the galaxy, and which makes the stars perfect subjects for Webb.”