The inner workings of spiral galaxies are of great import to astronomers, after all the Milky Way where we live is one. That’s why the James Webb Space Telescope just turned its finely tuned lenses into deep space, capturing the highest resolution images of spiral galaxies ever taken.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 The James Webb Space Telescope is at it again,
00:06 this time bringing us photos of not one, not two,
00:09 but 19 spiral galaxies residing in deep space.
00:13 The inner workings of spiral galaxies
00:15 are a great import to astronomers.
00:17 After all, the Milky Way where we live is one.
00:19 These images were all captured as part
00:21 of the Physics at Higher Angular Resolution in Nearby Galaxies
00:24 project.
00:25 The study is actually looking at 90 such galaxies,
00:28 hoping to get a better idea of how
00:30 they change and evolve over time.
00:32 And according to project scientists
00:33 for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science
00:36 Institute, Janice Lee, quote, "They're
00:38 mind-blowing, even for researchers
00:40 who have studied these same galaxies for decades.
00:43 That's because these are the highest resolution images
00:45 of spiral galaxies ever captured,
00:47 showing what Lee says reveals bubbles and filaments
00:50 like never before."
00:52 Researchers say these photos tell
00:53 a story about the formation and life cycles of the galaxies,
00:57 revealing wild and diverse patterns of stars
00:59 clustered in different ways, which they add the galaxies
01:02 with pink and red diffraction spikes might even
01:04 point to the presence of supermassive black holes.
01:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:12 (upbeat music)