The spiral arms of galaxy NGC 7496 are filled with cavernous bubbles and shells overlapping one another in this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. These filaments and hollow cavities are evidence of young stars releasing energy and, in some cases, blowing out the gas and dust of the interstellar medium surrounding them.
Clumps of dust and gas in the interstellar medium have absorbed the light from forming stars and emitted it back out in the infrared, lighting up an intricate network of cavernous bubbles and filamentary shells influenced by young stars releasing energy into the galaxy’s spiral arms. New imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving scientists their first look at high resolution into the fine structure of nearby galaxies and how that’s impacted by the formation of young stars. NGC 1433 is a barred spiral galaxy with a particularly bright core surrounded by double star forming rings. For the first time, in Webb’s infrared images, scientists can see cavernous bubbles of gas where forming stars have released energy into their surrounding environment.