Shining like a bright lighthouse among a sea of ​​galaxies, the Arp 220 illuminates the night sky in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In fact, two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 shines brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. It is a superluminal infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with the luminosity of over a trillion suns. For comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity – about ten billion suns.

Located 250 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, Arp 220 is the 220th object on Earth. Atlases of strange galaxies Halton Harp. It is the closest ULIRG to Earth and the brightest of the three closest galactic mergers.

The collision of two spiral galaxies began about 700 million years ago. This caused a massive burst of star formation. About 200 massive star clusters are located in a dense, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across (about 5 percent the diameter of the Milky Way). The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Previous radio telescope observations have revealed about 100 supernova remnants less than 500 light-years in diameter. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the cores of major galaxies located 1,200 light-years apart. Each of the cores has a rotating star-forming ring that emits the dazzling infrared light so prominent in this Webb image. This bright light creates diffraction flares – the starburst that dominates this image.

At the edge of this merger, Webb detects faint tidal tails, or material pulled by gravity from galaxies and shown in blue—evidence that the galactic dance is taking place. Organic material, shown in reddish-orange, appears as streams and fibers throughout the Arp 220. Webb observed the Arp 220 with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).