A distant spinning galaxy imaged by a powerful space telescope may seem calm, but it has a turbulent past. A new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to galaxies.

The image shows a calm orange-red galaxy, but this cosmic spiral of gas, dust, and stars hides a turbulent past, the debris of the large-scale collision of two previous galaxies that occurred about 500 million years ago.

The galaxy NGC 3256 is about 120 million light-years from Earth and is a member of the Hydra Centauri Supercluster. Hints of this vortex-like galaxy’s chaotic past are hidden in the James Webb Space Telescope image in the form of long branches of glowing dust and stars protruding from the galaxy’s main body and the brightest parts of NGC 3256.

Studying these cosmic collisions can teach astronomers a lot about how galaxies like ours, the Milky Way, grow by merging with other galaxies. Because this galactic growth causes black holes to merge and grow, studying remnants such as NGC 3256 could also help unravel the mystery of how supermassive black holes at the center of most galaxies reach millions or even billions of equivalent mass. Sun

The stellar merger that created NGC 3256 is also responsible for the galaxy’s intense burst of star formation. This is because when galaxies collide, they send gas and dust together into dense clouds, becoming the raw material for starbirth.

The formation of young stars can be seen as the brightest areas in NGC 3256’s orange-red glow. These stars beam up tiny dust particles by emitting infrared light that makes the galaxy shine brightly and make it perfect. target for JWST, designed to view the universe in the infrared range.

When galaxies collide, most stellar bodies emerge intact from the violent collisions, unlike the gas and dust content of these galaxies. This is due to the large gaps between the stars. However, this does not apply to all stars in these galaxies. NGC 3256’s JWST image shows strings of stars being ripped from their parent galaxies due to gravitational interaction between the colliding galaxies, causing incredible tidal forces.

A stunning image of this galaxy was created by JWST using data from the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Intermediate Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The visualization of NGC 3256 demonstrates the utility of JWST, the most powerful telescope ever launched into Earth orbit, for understanding the growth of galaxies and the evolution of the Universe.