Messier 74, NGC 628, JWST

Messier 74, NGC 628 The spiral galaxy (also known as NGC 628) lies some 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. An island universe of about 100 billion stars with two prominent spiral arms, M74 has long been admired by astronomers as a perfect example of a grand-design spiral galaxy. M74’s central region is brought into a stunning, sharp focus in this new image from the James Webb Telescope. The colorized combination of image data sets is from the  mid-infrared wavelengths using the MIRI camera. It reveals cooler stars and hidden  dusty structures in the grand-design spiral galaxy only hinted at in previous beautiful Hubble image. The distinctive purple appearance of  this imageis due to the unique chemical composition of NGC 628’s dust clouds, which are primarily made up of large molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. If we could see in these mid-infrared wavelengths, the night sky would look a lot more like this picture which would be very different and possibly frightening when compared to the visually beautiful image done by Hubble. https://earthandskyimaging.com/product/messier-74-ngc-628-hubble/   This image consists of data from the midrange infrared camera on the JWST at wavelengths of 21u, 11.3u and 7.7u with the R,G,B colors in the image set from the data in that order. The combination of the JWST image and the Hubble image is interesting as it shows exactly the area where the JWST infrared emissions are coming from. https://earthandskyimaging.com/product/messier-74-ngc-628-hubble-jwst/   This image was done by Michael Adler from data from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes(MAST).