James Webb photographed the infrared galaxy Arp 220, which is 1 trillion brighter than the Sun

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an unusual galaxy. It's called Arp 220 and is known to be extremely bright.

Here's What We Know

Arp 220 is the result of a collision between two spiral galaxies that began about 700 million years ago. Located in the constellation Snake, 250 million light-years from Earth, it is the closest ultra-bright infrared galaxy to us.

The collision of two spiral galaxies triggered a burst of star formation. Specifically, scientists found about two hundred massive clusters of stars in a region of cosmic dust 5,000 light years (5% of the Milky Way's dimeter). About a hundred supernova remnants in a region 500 light years across have also been discovered.

The cores of the merging galaxies are 1200 light years away from each other. The Hubble orbiting telescope was able to determine this. The object Arp 220 has a luminosity more than 1 trillion times larger than the Sun.

Source: NASA