Galaxy pair “VV 191” imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Webb Space Telescope | Sorae Portal site to the universe

This is a pair of galaxies in the Boesus direction.「VV191」he is. Recall the two galaxies facing each other with the eyes of a creature. VV 191 is one of about 2,000 “overlapping pairs of galaxies” identified by the “Galaxy Zoo” public participation astronomy project.

Viewed from Earth, VV 191 has a large white elliptical galaxy on the left half overlapping a spiral galaxy on the right, and it appears that part of the spiral arm extending from the spiral galaxy overlaps with the central part of the elliptical galaxy. According to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the two galaxies are relatively close on a cosmic scale, but they are not actively interacting.

If you zoom in on the elliptical galaxy, you can see an arc-shaped object at 10 o’clock from the center. This is an image of the more distant galaxy VV 191, gravitationally lensed by the elliptical galaxy VV 191.（※）It receives an image of this galaxy not only distorted into an arc by gravitational lensing, but also split, and a point-like image of the same galaxy is said to appear at 4 o’clock when viewed from the center of the elliptical. galaxy.

* … space-time is distorted by the mass of the celestial body in front of it (the lens of the celestial body), which changes the direction of transmission of the light emitted by the celestial body (the light source) on the other side, and the image from the Earth is distorted or enlarged, a phenomenon that appears to be

▲ Galaxy pair “VV 191” (background) and magnified image near the center of the elliptical galaxy (lower left). Image of a distant galaxy distorted and bisected by gravitational lensing ))]

this pictureHubble Space Telescope“Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)” andJames Webb Space TelescopeIt is generated based on the image obtained with the ‘Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam)’. The Hubble Space Telescope observed VV 191 at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, and the Webb Space Telescope at near-infrared wavelengths. Since ultraviolet and infrared radiation cannot be captured by the human eye, the colors are tinted according to the filters used during image acquisition (WFC3 … 336 nm and 606 nm: assigned to blue; NIRCam … 900 nm: green, 1.5 μm: yellow, 3.56 µm: reserved for red).

By combining data from VV 191 from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Webb Space Telescope, researchers will be able to analyze the light from the elliptical galaxies as they pass through the spiral galaxy, according to STScI, and determine the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. They say they managed to identify him. The first image was released on October 5, 2022 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and STScI, which operates the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.

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• Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Rogier Windhorst (ASU), William Keel (University of Alabama), Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne), JWST PEARLS Team, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
• STScI Webb and Hubble team up to track interstellar dust within a galaxy pair
• NASA Webb and Hubble team up to track interstellar dust within a galaxy pair
• ESA/web – Galaxy Pair VV 191 (Image by Webb and Hubble Composite)

Text / Takehiro Matsumura