NASA Astronomy Image of the Day for February 18, 2023: Since the launch of NASA’s most expensive and most advanced eye in the sky – the James Webb Space Telescope – it has never stopped sending back stunning images. NASA Astronomy Image presents a stunning daytime image of the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, also known as NGC 1365, captured by the James Webb Telescope. Located in the constellation Fornax, the reddish swirls around the galaxy indicate recent star formation and potential locations for future star nurseries.
Just 56 million light-years away, NGC 1365 is a massive barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. Amazingly, it’s twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way! NASA explain, “Astronomers suspect that the gravitational field of NGC 1365’s bar plays an important role in the galaxy’s evolution, throwing gas and dust into the star-forming maelstrom and ultimately into the active galaxy’s central, supermassive core. It feeds material into a massive black hole.”
The tech behind the barred spiral galaxy image from the web Binoculars
This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows stunning detail of this spectacular spiral in infrared light. A complex network of dusty stars and bubbles is formed by young stars winding spiral arms from the central bar of the galaxy.
What are barred spiral galaxies?
Spiral galaxies are characterized by a rotating disk with spiral arms extending from a dense central region. The Milky Way is an example of a spiral galaxy.
There are four main classes of galaxies – spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Spiral galaxies are distinguished by their complex structure, which includes a central bulge within a rotating disk that exhibits a spiral pattern starting from the bulge. These galaxies are typically surrounded by sparsely populated haloes, in roughly spherical regions located above and below the disc.
In contrast, barred spiral galaxies have arms that do not extend all the way to the center, but instead are connected by a straight bar of stars with a central nucleus.
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