A Look Back in Time
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy (CC BY 4.0)
The James Webb Telescope captured this image of the NGC 5134 galaxy.
Peering into the universe can be a bit like traveling back in time. Recently, a powerful space telescope gave us a view of a galaxy that’s millions of light-years away. The telescope’s image of the galaxy shows light that began traveling to the telescope not long after the dinosaurs roamed Earth.
Looking Back in Time
The image of the galaxy, which is called NGC 5134, was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NGC 5134 is 65 million light-years away from the Webb telescope. What does that mean? A light-year is a measure of distance. One light-year is the distance light travels in one year. That means the light from NGC 5134 takes 65 million years to reach the telescope.
In other words, the image from the telescope shows the NGC 5134 galaxy as it looked 65 million years ago! At that time, the dinosaurs had only recently become extinct, and it would be tens of millions of years before humans appeared.
© alex-mit—iStock/Getty Images
This illustration shows what the James Webb telescope looks like in space.
A Star Factory
But 65 million light-years is still not a huge distance compared to the size of the universe. NGC 5134 is close enough for the Webb telescope to capture lots of little details so that scientists can learn more about what goes on in galaxies. One big thing that goes on is that new stars are born.
NGC 5134 is a spiral-shaped galaxy, with clouds of gas floating around the “arms” of the spiral. This gas gets used up to form new stars. But each time an old star dies, some of its gas is recycled and made available again.
There’s still plenty to learn. Scientists estimate that there may be as many as two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) galaxies in the universe. Each one holds its own treasure trove of information.
