The Whirlpool is a spiral galaxy, much like our own Milky Way. Its graceful, curving spiral arms contain billions of stars. It’s about 27 million light-years from Earth, in the direction of our constellation Canes Venatici, aka the Hunting Dogs. On August 29, 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the new images of the Whirlpool from the James Webb Space Telescope.
The images give us new perspective on this galaxy, which is one of the most-viewed and most-photographed galaxies of all time.
A grand-design spiral galaxy
The Whirlpool galaxy is what scientists call a grand-design spiral galaxy. That means its spiral arms are more well-developed than most other spiral galaxies. The galactic arms, filled with stars, gracefully wind around the center of the galaxy, like a giant pinwheel.
The Whirlpool galaxy is impressive enough as seen in regular visible light. But now, the new images from Webb – in both near-infrared and mid-infrared – take it to another level. Indeed, the mid-infrared image is particularly stunning, with incredible detail visible. The darker red regions are filled with warm dust. In contrast, ionized gas causes a more yellow-orange color in other regions. In addition, bright knots of material can also be seen, as well as black “bubbles.”
Galactic portrait of the Whirlpool
The new portrait of the Whirlpool galaxy that ESA released is, in fact, a combination of two images. One is the near-infrared image that Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) captured. Likewise, Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) took the other mid-infrared image. Although Webb is primarily a NASA mission, ESA contributed half of the MIRI instrument.
Scientists then combined the two separate images into one beautiful portrait of the galaxy.
A FEAST for the eyes
Overall, the resulting composite image of the galaxy is stunning. To be sure, you could say that it is a feast for the eyes! And indeed, the image is just one of a series of new images that astronomers have obtained recently. Those observations are collectively called Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST.
FEAST studies the interactions of star formation and how energy from the stars goes back into the environments where they formed. That movement of energy is called stellar feedback. It helps scientists determine how fast new stars are formed and created accurate models of star formation.
FEAST focuses on star forming regions of galaxies outside of our own Milky Way. This way, astronomers can study star formation in the universe overall, not just in our galaxy. With Webb, astronomers can now see star clusters in galaxies outside of the Local Group of galaxies, of which the Milky Way is a part.
Also, in addition to their formation, astronomers can now better understand how long it takes for metallic elements to “pollute” the new stars. They can also determine how long it takes for the stars to clean out the remaining gases around them. It is that gas and dust from which new planets are formed.
Intriguingly, in 2021, astronomers reported detecting the first possible extragalactic planet in the Whirlpool galaxy.
Bottom line: The James Webb Space Telescope just obtained incredible new infrared images of the famous Whirlpool galaxy, 27 million light-years from Earth. Like our own galaxy, the Whirlpool galaxy is likely filled with billions of worlds of its own.
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