A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed the stunning “skeleton” structure of a distant galaxy.
The universe consists of gas, dust, and stars from the spiral galaxy IC 5332, located in the Sculptor constellation more than 29 million light-years from Earth. Because it is almost perfectly oriented relative to Earth, its spiral arms can be seen with remarkable clarity.
This is not the first time IC 5332 has been photographed. The galaxy, which spans 66,000 light-years—about two-thirds the size of our Milky Way—has also been imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in the past. However, Hubble could not observe in the infrared spectrum, while the James Webb Space Telescope can. As a result, the updated image contains so much detail that it appears almost entirely different.
The fresh image behind the dust reveals a network of gas and stars. Hubble’s image of IC 5332 shows the structure of some spiral arms obscured by dust clouds.
“Hubble’s images show dark regions that seem to separate the spiral arms, while Webb’s images reveal many continuously repeating structures resembling the spiral arms,” stated a representative from the European Space Agency (ESA).
ESA explained that this difference is due to the galaxy’s dust, which has the ability to scatter ultraviolet and visible light much more than the infrared frequencies available to JWST. Different stars can also be seen between the two images because some stars shine brighter at different frequencies compared to others.
To capture this image, JWST utilized the Mid-Infrared Instrument—a specialized camera designed to eliminate infrared noise from other thermal sources, which must be cooled rapidly to minus 266 degrees Celsius. The JWST’s location in the vast coldness of space, far from Earth, is also essential for detecting faint infrared light, as our planet’s heat would obscure the signal from the distant galaxy.
Approximately 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, this $10 billion space observatory was launched to a stable gravitational position 1.5 million kilometers from Earth—known as a Lagrange point—in December 2021.
JWST is the most advanced space telescope ever built, capable of “sneaking a peek” inside the atmospheres of distant exoplanets and reading the first chapter of cosmic history in its faintest light—stretched to infrared frequencies from billions of years of traveling during the expansion of the fabric of spacetime.
After six months of rigorous setup and calibration, the telescope’s instruments and its 6.5-meter-wide gold-coated mirror were ready for operation. Following the release of its first images in July, this telescope has provided a steady stream of insights into our near and far universe.
To name just a few, the telescope has captured breathtaking images of wheel-shaped galaxies, the Einstein ring, the Sword of Orion, the eerie halo of Neptune, and the deepest image of the universe ever created.
In the case of IC 5332, ESA scientists hope that by comparing the images taken by Hubble and JWST of this distant galaxy, they can learn more about its composition and structure, as well as how these may translate into broader patterns observed across all spiral galaxies.
