The universe looks a little different in mid-infrared light, a longer wavelength captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Don’t be distracted by distant stars and galaxies that look like multi-colored candies! Instead draw your attention to the “messy” blue “scoop.” This is one of two galaxies in Arp 107. The blue orb to its left is interreacting with it, making up its other “half.”
What’s remarkable about this image is that the bright diffraction spikes in the larger galaxy on the right are from its active supermassive black hole.
See a “bridge” that connects the pair in Webb’s near-infrared light observations.
Arp 107, a pair of interacting galaxies, shines brightly in high-resolution infrared light. A collision, which occurred hundreds of millions ago, created a tenuous bridge of gas and dust that connects the two galaxies, and started a new wave of star formation that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures clearly.