Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2024

MARCH-APRIL 2024 detailed scenes of nearby galaxies in a combination of near- and mid-in- frared light. These Webb images are part of a large, long-standing project, the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) pro- gram, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide. Before Webb took these images, PHANGS was already brimming with data from NASA’s Hubble Space Tel- escope, the European Southern Ob- servatory’s Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array, including ob- servations in ultraviolet, visible, and by NASA/ESA/CSA − Claire Blome & Christine Pulliam I t’s oh-so-easy to be absolutely mesmerized by these spiral galax- ies. Follow their clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to their centers, where there may be old star clusters and – some- times – active supermassive black holes. Only NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can deliver highly Webb depicts staggering structure in 19 nearby spiral galaxies