The James Webb Space Telescope has captured NGC 5134 — a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo, 65 million light-years away. The light Webb collected for this image has been traveling toward us since shortly after Tyrannosaurus rex went extinct.
Two of Webb's instruments worked together to build this portrait. NIRCam captures near-infrared light from the stars and star clusters scattered along the galaxy's spiral arms. MIRI detects mid-infrared emission from warm dust clouds — including complex organic molecules made of interconnected carbon rings, which give astronomers a way to probe the chemistry of interstellar space.
Together, the data reveal a galaxy in constant flux. The gas clouds threading NGC 5134's spiral arms are where new stars are born. When stars die, they return that gas to the galaxy: massive stars do so explosively, in supernovae that scatter stellar material across hundreds of light-years; Sun-like stars do so more gently, shedding their outer atmospheres as they swell into red giants. That returned gas eventually feeds the next generation of stars.
Studying nearby galaxies like NGC 5134 — where individual stars and gas structures can be resolved in detail — allows astronomers to extend that understanding to galaxies far too distant for such close observation.