NGC 628, the spiral galaxy seen by James Webb in great detail

After seeing the first exciting processing of infrared images, we wanted to propose last week a comparison of specifications, operating modes and details of the first captures between the two different generation telescopes, namely the veteran Hubble and the brand new James Webb .

Of course we knew well that it was just the beginning and in fact just recently the NASA telescope shared a new shot, elaborated a posteriori by Judy Schmidt and able to excite any astronomy enthusiast, which shows the galaxy NGC 628also known as the M74, with a detail never seen before.

Also nicknamed “Phantom Galaxy”, it shines in an absolutely unprecedented way in a new elaboration by Judy Schmidt and based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope, which was captured using the observatory’s medium infrared instrument (MIRI).

Also dubbed the “perfect spiral” by some astronomers due to its incredible symmetry, the galaxy is scientifically interesting due to the presence of a black hole, which astronomers speculate is rooted in its heart. Here is a comparison between the capture of the Webb and the previous one by Hubble. By the way, the new telescope has not only photographed galaxies and photos of the early universe but also a detail of our solar system: have you already seen the first images of Jupiter captured by James Webb?

The galaxy has been professionally photographed many times before, including by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). What distinguishes Webb’s images from those collected in the past is the mid-infrared range that highlights the cosmic dust, together with the power of its 18-segment hexagonal mirror, which, thanks to a privileged position in Lagrange’s L2 point, suffers of minimal interference compared to previous solutions.

James Webb observed M74 earlier this week, but anyone wishing to look at other cosmic objects elaborated by Judy Schmidt can do so from his Flickr page (in SOURCE). Judy Schmidt is an expert in processing images from the cosmos and has been working in this segment for some time.