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A Dance of Galaxies

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has spied a pair of dwarf galaxies engaged in a gravitational dance. These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Aside from the Milky Way’s own dwarf companions (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), this is the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf system where astronomers have directly observed both a gas bridge and resolved stellar populations.

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Astronomers Discover One of the Most Massive Binary Stars in the Galaxy

Using archival Hubble Space Telescope data and new observations, astronomers have precisely measured the binary star system NGC3603-A1 in the starburst region NGC 3603, located 22,000 light years from the Sun. This system consists of two massive stars weighing approximately 93 and 70 times the mass of the Sun, orbiting each other every 3.8 days, making it one of the most massive and fastest-orbiting binary systems discovered in our galaxy.

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Webb Takes a Fresh Look at a Classic Deep Field

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an unprecedentedly deep image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field using its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), revealing over 2,500 galaxies including hundreds of extremely red, dust-obscured or mature galaxies formed early in cosmic history. This nearly 100-hour observation provides detailed insights into galaxy formation and evolution by resolving structures and light distribution in distant galaxies across billions of years.

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Hubble Spies Swirling Spiral

The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3285B, located 137 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra, which is the largest and longest constellation in the sky. NGC 3285B is part of the Hydra I galaxy cluster, one of the largest nearby clusters, anchored by two giant elliptical galaxies larger than the Milky Way. Positioned on the cluster’s outskirts, NGC 3285B gained attention due to hosting a Type Ia supernova in 2023, visible as a bluish dot on its disk. Hubble’s observations of this galaxy are part of a program studying 100 Type Ia supernovae across multiple wavelengths to improve cosmic distance measurements by accounting for distance and dust effects.

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