{"id":236811,"date":"2026-05-08T22:32:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/spiral-galaxys-brilliant-heart-shines-bright-in-a-new-picture-from-nasas-webb-telescope"},"modified":"2026-05-08T22:32:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T03:32:21","slug":"spiral-galaxys-brilliant-heart-shines-bright-in-a-new-picture-from-nasas-webb-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/spiral-galaxys-brilliant-heart-shines-bright-in-a-new-picture-from-nasas-webb-telescope","title":{"rendered":"Spiral galaxy\u2019s brilliant heart shines bright in a new picture from NASA\u2019s Webb telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/spiral-galaxys-brilliant-heart-shines-bright-in-a-new-picture-from-nasas-webb-telescope.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A spiral galaxy\u2019s brilliant heart outshines everything within sight in a new picture from NASA\u2019s Webb Space Telescope.<\/p>\n<p>The image released this week depicts the Messier 77 galaxy 45 million light-years away in the Cetus, or whale, constellation. A <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-04-astronomers-mind-power-black-hole.html\">light year<\/a> is about 6 trillion miles.<\/p>\n<p>The galaxy\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-06-image-hubble-elliptical-galaxy-messier.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">active nucleus<\/a> is powered by a supermassive black hole that\u2019s 8 million times more massive than the sun. Surrounding gas is sucked into a tight orbit around the black hole, becoming so hot that it radiates in the extreme. Webb\u2019s mid-infrared instrument captured the stunning details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A spiral galaxy\u2019s brilliant heart outshines everything within sight in a new picture from NASA\u2019s Webb Space Telescope. The image released this week depicts the Messier 77 galaxy 45 million light-years away in the Cetus, or whale, constellation. A light year is about 6 trillion miles. The galaxy\u2019s active nucleus is powered by a supermassive [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}