File:A Wreath of Star Formation in NGC 7469 (52577236876).jpg

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Description	Webb’s holiday card sorted! 🎄 NGC 7469 is like a cosmic wreath bursting with new stars. This galaxy is very dusty, but Webb’s infrared vision can peer through to observe features like the intense ring of star formation close around its bright center. Read more: esawebb.org/images/potm2212a/ What are those large spikes? They’re not real objects, but diffraction spikes, an effect of very bright light interacting with the telescope mirrors. Here the center of the galaxy is extremely bright due to light emitted by heated dust and gas falling into the central black hole. Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans [Image description: A face-on galaxy, with gray spiral arms, sprinkled with bright red patches of star formation. Its center glows brightly and 6 spikes project from it - these are diffraction spikes. In the background are red and white glowing dots, which are other galaxies. Some of the background galaxies are recognizable as spirals.]
Date	21 December 2022, 10:00
Source	A Wreath of Star Formation in NGC 7469
Author	NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from Greenbelt, MD, USA

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by James Webb Space Telescope at https://flickr.com/photos/50785054@N03/52577236876. It was reviewed on 6 June 2023 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

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Date and time of data generation	10:00, 21 December 2022
Short title	A Wreath of Star Formation in NGC 7469
Credit/Provider	ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus,
Source	ESA/Webb
Image title	This image is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its companion galaxy IC 5283 is partly visible in the lower left portion of this image. This spiral galaxy has recently been studied as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS) Early Release Science program with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which aims to study the physics of star formation, black hole growth, and feedback in four nearby, merging luminous infrared galaxies. Other galaxies studied as part of the survey include previous ESA/Webb Pictures of the Month II ZW 096 and IC 1623. NGC 7469 is home to an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the galaxy’s central black hole. This galaxy provides astronomers with the unique opportunity to study the relationship between AGNs and starburst activity because this particular object hosts an AGN that is surrounded by a starburst ring at a distance of a mere 1500 light-years. While NGC 7469 is one of the best studied AGNs in the sky, the compact nature of this system and the presence of a great deal of dust have made it difficult for scientists to achieve both the resolution and sensitivity needed to study this relationship in the infrared. Now, with Webb, astronomers can explore the galaxy’s starburst ring, the central AGN, and the gas and dust in between. Using Webb’s MIRI, NIRCam and NIRspec instruments to obtain images and spectra of NGC 7469 in unprecedented detail, the GOALS team has uncovered a number of details about the object. This includes very young star-forming clusters never seen before, as well as pockets of very warm, turbulent molecular gas, and direct evidence for the destruction of small dust grains within a few hundred light-years of the nucleus — proving
Publisher	ESA/Webb
Usage terms	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
JPEG file comment	This image is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its companion galaxy IC 5283 is partly visible in the lower left portion of this image. This spiral galaxy has recently been studied as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS) Early Release Science program with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which aims to study the physics of star formation, black hole growth, and feedback in four nearby, merging luminous infrared galaxies. Other galaxies studied as part of the survey include previous ESA/Webb Pictures of the Month II ZW 096 and IC 1623. NGC 7469 is home to an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the galaxy’s central black hole. This galaxy provides astronomers with the unique opportunity to study the relationship between AGNs and starburst activity because this particular object hosts an AGN that is surrounded by a starburst ring at a distance of a mere 1500 light-years. While NGC 7469 is one of the best studied AGNs in the sky, the compact nature of this system and the presence of a great deal of dust have made it difficult for scientists to achieve both the resolution and sensitivity needed to study this relationship in the infrared. Now, with Webb, astronomers can explore the galaxy’s starburst ring, the central AGN, and the gas and dust in between. Using Webb’s MIRI, NIRCam and NIRspec instruments to obtain images and spectra of NGC 7469 in unprecedented detail, the GOALS team has uncovered a number of details about the object. This includes very young star-forming clusters never seen before, as well as pockets of very warm, turbulent molecular gas, and direct evidence for the destruction of small dust grains within a few hundred light-years of the nucleus — proving that the AGN is impacting the surrounding interstellar medium. Furthermore, highly ionised, diffuse atomic gas seems to be exiting the nucleus at roughly 6.4 million kilometres per hour — part of a galactic outflow that had previously been identified, but is now revealed in stunning detail with Webb. With analysis of the rich Webb datasets still underway, additional secrets of this local AGN and starburst laboratory are sure to be revealed. A prominent feature of this image is the striking six-pointed star that perfectly aligns with the heart of NGC 7469. Unlike the galaxy, this is not a real celestial object, but an imaging artifact known as a diffraction spike, caused by the bright, unresolved AGN. Diffraction spikes are patterns produced as light bends around the sharp edges of a telescope. Webb has three struts, with two angled at 150 degrees from its vertical strut, and its primary mirror is composed of hexagonal segments that each contain edges for light to diffract against. Webb’s struts are designed so that their diffraction spikes partially overlap with those created by the mirrors. Both of these lead to Webb’s complex star pattern. [Image Description: This image shows a spiral galaxy that is dominated by a bright central region. The galaxy has blue-purple hues with orange-red regions filled with stars. Also visible is large diffraction spike, which appears as a star pattern over the central region of the galaxy. Lots of stars and galaxies fill the background scene.] Links Video: A Wreath of Star Formation in NGC 7469
Orientation	Normal
Horizontal resolution	25.4 dpi
Vertical resolution	25.4 dpi
Software used	Adobe Photoshop 24.0 (Windows)
File change date and time	22:41, 19 December 2022
Y and C positioning	Centered
Exif version	2.32
Date and time of digitizing	14:59, 23 November 2022
Meaning of each component	Y Cb Cr does not exist
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Color space	Uncalibrated
IIM version	4
Bits per component	16 16 16
Compression scheme	Uncompressed
Height	4,103 px
Width	4,121 px
Pixel composition	RGB
Number of components	3
Contact information	https://esawebb.org ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr Baltimore, MD, 21218 United States
Type of media	Observation
Date metadata was last modified	23:41, 19 December 2022
Unique ID of original document	xmp.did:1b6182a3-d0c1-9548-895a-a646ebd3c0e2

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