All articles tagged with #infrared glow
An amateur astronomer's social media post led to the discovery of a collision between two ice giant exoplanets in a distant space system. The collision created a bright heat afterglow and a dust cloud that dimmed the parent star over time. The sighting was confirmed by a network of professional and amateur astronomers, and further observations will be made to study the system's development.
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a bright burst of star formation triggered by two spiral galaxies colliding into one another, known collectively as Arp 220. The colliding galaxies generated an infrared glow that contains the light of more than 1 trillion suns. The scintillating light show from the ultra-luminous infrared galaxy is the spiked starburst feature at the center of the new Webb image. The telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument captured the composite image. Arp 220 is located 250 million light-years away in the Serpens constellation, and it’s the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.