(courtesy of Good News Network)
Two instruments aboard the Webb observatory have combined to create a jaw-dropping image revealing the structure of NGC 5134, the spiral galaxy 65 million light‑years away.
“NGC 5134 is fairly close by, as far as galaxies go,” said a statement from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.
The relative proximity of the star system allowed two of Webb’s powerful cameras to join forces to pick out fine detail in the galaxy’s tightly wound arms.
Webb’s mid-infrared instrument, a versatile camera/spectrograph, shows warm dust and complex molecules across the galaxy’s clouds, while its near-infrared camera, the primary imaging instrument onboard, highlights the stars and clusters embedded within them.
This is probably the reason no signs of other life have been detected. First the distance and second the vast periods of time involved. A good guess for the duration of intelligent, technologically advanced life might be a few thousand years. I mean, humans are doing a dandy job of bringing that down to a couple of hundred years. So the chances are, if there is such life somewhere in the galaxy in the photo, it arose and disappeared a few million years ago or will do so in a few million years from now. Just not right now while we are trying to detect it.
