James Webb took a photo of the galaxy NGC 3256, which was created 500 million years ago by the collision of two other galaxies

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the result of a collision between two galaxies that occurred half a billion years ago.

Here's What We Know

A collision between two galaxies 500 Ma resulted in the birth of a new galaxy. The new galaxy, called NGC 3256, is about 120 million light-years from our home planet. Scientists believe that observing it will reveal more about how galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their centres merge.

The collision has triggered the active formation of stars. This is due to the merging of clouds of cosmic dust and gas. However, stars that already exist don't collide with each other because of the vast distances involved.

Scientists have marked the areas where the star formation is most intense in red in a photograph taken by a space telescope. The stars emit infrared light, causing the galaxy to glow. This makes NGC 3256 an ideal target for the James Webb telescope, which observes objects in the Universe in the infrared.

Entire strands of stars can also be seen in the image. These have been ripped out of their galaxies by gravitational interaction. NGC 3256 was imaged by the Space Observatory using Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrumentation (MIRI) data.

Source: space