The distorted spiral galaxy at center, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical at left, the Egg, are locked in an active embrace. This image combines data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and marks the telescope’s second year of science. MUST CREDIT: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The latest made-ya-look image from the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived, and it looks like .
.. a penguin.
A giant penguin in space. NASA officials on Friday marked two full years of scientific results from the telescope with the release of the image, which actually shows a pair of intertwined galaxies, known as Arp 142, and nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg. The first is a spiral galaxy; the second is an elliptical galaxy.
“The galaxies’ ‘dance’ gravitationally pulled on the Penguin’s thinner areas of gas and dust, causing them to crash in waves and form stars,” NASA said in a news release. “Look for those areas in two places: what looks like a fish in its ‘beak’ and the ‘feathers’ in its ‘tail.’” The Webb telescope has done everything that astronomers had hoped it would do, notably looking deeper into space and further back in time than any previous telescope.
And it has produced pretty pictures. The universe as captured by the Webb’s mirror and suite of instruments is beautiful, dazzling, flamboyant. These grabby images demonstrate the remarkable resolution of the Webb telescope, NASA’s $10 billion successor to the still-operating Hubble Space Telescope.
But .
