Last Update: April 18, 2023, 04:56 IST
Arp 220’s brightness in infrared light makes it an ideal target for the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image: NASA website)
Arp 220 is actually a merger of two spiral galaxies that began to collide about 700 million years ago, causing a rapid burst of star formation.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a breathtaking view of Arp 220, an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) located 250 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens.
Arp 220 is actually a merger of two spiral galaxies that began to collide about 700 million years ago, causing a rapid burst of star formation.
Today, Arp 220 is home to approximately 200 massive star clusters, which occupy a dense, dusty region roughly 5 percent the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy.
Arp 220’s brightness in infrared light makes it an ideal target for the James Webb Space Telescope.
In fact, the Milky Way has a luminosity of over a trillion suns, which dwarfs the Milky Way’s more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns. This makes it the closest ULIRG and the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope previously revealed the centers of the original galaxies 1,200 light-years away, each with a swirling, star-forming ring that emits bright infrared light.
The Arp 220’s view of the Webb shows the starburst feature that dominates the image, created by bright light that produces diffraction spikes.
Less than 500 light-years away, previous radio telescope observations have revealed about 100 supernova remnants, making Arp 220 an attractive target for further study.
The amount of gas in the small, densely packed region of Arp 220 is comparable to all the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy, indicating its importance in studying galaxy formation and evolution.
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