NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope peer through cosmic dust in latest team up

NASA combined the power of its two best oabservatories – the Hubble telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope –  to learn more about how cosmic dust obscures distant galaxies. The newly released pictures feature the galactic pair named VV 191 and it has been observed through the infrared visions of Webb combined with the data collected in ultraviolet and visible light by Hubble.  

The pair intriguingly has different classes of galaxies as one on the left is an elliptical galaxy whereas the other is a spiral galaxy. Using the world’s most powerful observatories, the astronomers traced light that was emitted by the bright white elliptical galaxy which helped them identify the effects of interstellar dust in its companion.

Thanks to Webb’s unmatched infrared capabilities, it was able to photograph the galaxy’s longer, extremely dusty spiral arms in far more detail. This gives the appearance that the spiral arms are overlapping with the central bulge of the bright white elliptical galaxy although the two galaxies are considerable far away. 

“We got more than we bargained for by combining data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope!" Rogier Windhorst, lead author of the new research paper and an astronomer at Arizona State University said in a NASA statement. 

Webb’s new data allowed us to trace the light that was emitted by the bright white elliptical galaxy, at left, through the winding spiral galaxy at right – and identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. According to the researchers, the colours green, yellow, and red correspond to Webb’s near-infrared data whereas the colour blue is from Hubble’s observations. "VV 191 is the latest addition to a small number of galaxies that helps researchers like us directly compare the properties of galactic dust. This target was selected from nearly 2,000 superimposed galaxy pairs identified by Galaxy Zoo citizen science volunteers", the expert revealed. 

Hubble-Webb pair yields new discovery

The combined powers of Webb and Hubble resulted in a new discovery of a distant galaxy whose appearance has been warped by the enormous gravity of the bright elliptical galaxy. In the research paper, Windhorst underscored a faint red arc, above the elliptical galaxy, which is actually the light from a distant galaxy bent by the galaxy in the foreground because of the 'gravitational lensing' phenomenon. 

The light emerging from the distant galaxy was so faint and red that it went unrecognised in Hubble data but was clearly highlighted in Webb’s near-infrared image. Since the two telescopes were used to study more about the dust clouds, the expert said that "understanding where dust is present in galaxies is important, because dust changes the brightness and colors that appear in images of the galaxies. Dust grains are partially responsible for the formation of new stars and planets, so we are always seeking to identify their presence for further studies".