When the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of last year, astronomers gifted him with an infinite number of missions. And I say endless because ultimate goal it’s not just about this engineering marvel to answer every question we have about the universe. It is to answer questions that no mortal man would think to ask.

But before we move on to that mind-blowing end goal, our brilliant new lens is dutifully works his way through the assignments we gave it, one of which is to pierce the veils of cosmic gas and dust and reveal secret stellar escapades within. Things that standard optical telescopes like Hubble can’t always see.

Here, on Tuesday, JWST decodes a brilliant scene behind one of the dark curtains of space, a dusty canopy that envelops a pair of merging galaxies about 270 million light-years from Earth.

JWST caught a glimpse of a sparkling, sparkling space scene.

ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

What am I looking at?

We have two spheres called IC 1623 A and B stuck in a collision through space and time. They are located in the constellation Cetus and have long been of interest to scientists for several reasons.

Perhaps most strikingly, they may be in the process of forming a supermassive black hole—a massive void with enough gravitational pull to warp the fabric of our universe as we know it.

But this nascent cave of destruction is expected to be strung with a necklace of light.

IC 1623’s ultrahigh-intensity galaxy merger also stimulated the creation of a rapid star-forming region nearby. It’s called a starburst, and in particular, this one, according to the European Space Agency, creates new stars at a rate more than 20 times that of the Milky Way galaxy.

And this is what JWST captured.

Hubble has already given us a glimpse of IC 1623 A and B, but astronomy’s latest contract with the cosmos has broken through the duo’s cosmic veil, just as scientists hoped it would from the start. In doing so, it showed us the luminous core of this merger and presented humanity with a complete, mesmerizing image of IC 1623, not hidden with a central region left to our imagination.

Here’s Hubble’s view of the merging galaxies IC 1623 A and B. It’s much less sparkling because the central regions of these spheres are obscured by dark dust.

ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

Why can JWST do what Hubble can’t?

Two words: infrared imaging.

All light emitted from deep space can be categorized on a sort of diagram known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Different wavelengths of light, which also translate into different colors in our eyes, are located in different parts. On the one hand you have redder wavelengths and on the other bluer.

But if you go beyond the red side of the electromagnetic spectrum, as some lights really do, you get to infrared light.

Infrared light, unlike regular red light, is essentially invisible to the human eye. That means it’s also invisible to instruments that act like human eyes, even if they’re really powerful versions like the Hubble Space Telescope.

But infrared light is exactly the kind of light emitted by stars in most clouds of dense cosmic dust, like the veil surrounding IC 1623. So to understand what’s going on inside, we need an infrared telescope. And this is JWST.

This infographic illustrates the spectrum of electromagnetic energy, specifically highlighting the parts detected by NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer, and Webb Space Telescopes. Spitzer is now retired and was not as high-tech as JWST.

NASA and J. Olmsted [STScI]

As a side note, light from stars and other phenomena located very, very far from Earth also reaches our planet as infrared light. That is why JWST is prepared to provide us with information about remote The universe as it was near the beginning of time, information invisible to us and the Hubble Space Telescope. More on that here.

Returning to IC 1623, ESA explains that “Webb’s infrared sensitivity and its impressive resolution at these wavelengths allow it to see beyond the dust and resulted in the spectacular image above, a combination of MIRI and NIRCam images,” in link to two of JWST’s High Technology Instruments.

Another easter egg in this image, as with all JWST images, are the eight-sided diffraction spikes you see in the very center. (It looks like six spikes, but there are two mini-spikes running horizontally through the midpoint. They’re just hard to see). All JWST images have this signature, unlike Hubble’s four-sided version.

stsci-01g52a88bezvk0040jwtsrq1hc.png

Here is a schematic of what the JWST diffraction peaks look like. You’ll see them in every JWST image!

NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

In general, these spikes are extremely noticeable when there is a lot of light in the image, which explains why the telescope’s latest image of two galactic nuclei boasts its bright central snowflake.

Hopefully, the next time JWST focuses its lens, it will be on one of these views with evidence of something we never thought to ask about.

https://www.cnet.com/science/space/nasas-webb-telescope-reveals-sparkling-scene-invisible-to-hubble/#ftag=CADf328eec