Webb zooms in on Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbour, reveals stunning details

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope continues to amaze us with stunning pictures of the cosmos. The European Space Agency has released the latest picture captured by the powerful telescope, featuring NGC 6822, the irregular galaxy known as the Milky Way's nearest neighbor that is not one of its satellites.

The image, captured using Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), reveals unprecedented detail of this intriguing celestial object that lies 1.5 million light-years away.

Designed to explore different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, the two instruments allow scientists to observe distinct components of our galactic neighbour. The MIRI, particularly sensitive to gas-rich regions, captured the galaxy's yellow swirls, while the NIRCam provided a clear view of its densely packed field of stars.

NGC 6822 boasts very low metallicity - it contains very low proportions of elements that are not hydrogen and helium. Since elements beyond hydrogen and helium are mainly produced by stars over their lifetimes, low-metallicity objects offer vital insights into the early universe, when everything had minimal metal content.

Low-metallicity objects like NGC 6822 are particularly interesting to astronomers to understand the evolution of stars and the life cycle of interstellar dust in such environments.

NGC 6822 was first discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884, who miscategorized it as an "exceedingly faint nebula" due to the limitations of telescopes at the time. Confusions regarding its apparent size, brightness, and true nature arose as astronomers did not account for the differences in observations made with various telescopes.

It was Edwin Hubble who conducted in-depth research on NGC 6822. His findings settled a longstanding debate among astronomers about the extent of the cosmos, proving that there were indeed objects beyond our home galaxy.

Continuing the legacy of NGC 6822's exploration, Susan Keyser, the first woman to receive a PhD in astronomy from Caltech, conducted an extensive investigation of the galaxy for her 1966 thesis and her work remained the most comprehensive study of NGC 6822 until the 2000s.

Now, Webb Space Telescope, with its state-of-the-art capabilities, is helping astronomers deepen their understanding of this key local galaxy even further. 

📸 This NASA/ESA @HUBBLE_space image shows globular cluster NGC 6652. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars is what gives these star-studded objects their regular, spherical shape 👉https://t.co/l1rPFYnQgz pic.twitter.com/rH7EIErdak

— ESA (@esa) July 31, 2023