JWST reveals spiral galaxies’ life cycles, from dust to stars
<p>If there’s one rule that’s practically universal in astronomy, it’s this: you can only observe the parts of the Universe that your instruments are sensitive to. As a result, when most of us think about the objects that are out there in the cosmos, we think about the components that are easiest to see: things that are bright, close by, and that emit radiation in the form of visible light. When we think of galaxies, we think of the stars within them; when we think of stars, we think primarily of the ones that appear brightest to our eyes and in our telescopes. But there’s a whole Universe out there to explore, and much of it doesn’t emit any visible light at all.</p>
<p>This is true even for large spiral galaxies like the Milky Way. We aren’t just a collection of stars, with the occasional “dust lane” of neutral matter that blocks the starlight from behind it, but rather a rich network of gas and dust, dotted with stars and with cavities blown in them by violent stellar cataclysms. By looking at 19 nearby, face-on spiral galaxies with JWST’s remarkable, unprecedentedly sharp and powerful eyes, <a href="https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-105" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) collaboration</a> has at last uncovered <a href="https://www.mpia.de/news/2024-phangs-data-release-jwst" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the life cycles of stars</a> within them. From <a href="https://esawebb.org/news/weic2403/?lang=" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">breathtaking sights to breakthrough science</a>, here’s what was revealed when we took our greatest look of all at these nearby Milky Way analogues.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-reveals-spiral-galaxies-life-cycles-from-dust-to-stars-16482fd2483b"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>