James Webb’s Newest Image Shows a Giant Penguin and an Egg

Penguins live in Antarctica, South America, Africa, Australia and … space?

The newest image from the James Webb Space Telescope appears to show one of these dapper, black-and-white birds in the cosmos next to an egg. In reality, the high-tech telescope captured a pair of intertwined galaxies—one that’s an elliptical galaxy and the other that’s a spiral galaxy—collectively called Arp 142. Their fitting nickname? The Penguin and the Egg.

The telescope captured the galaxies using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The Penguin and the Egg first passed each other between 25 and 75 million years ago, which caused the formation of new stars.

They’re roughly the same mass, which is why they haven’t merged together. But astronomers say one will eventually consume the other, likely hundreds of millions of years from now.

The Penguin and the Egg are roughly 100,000 light-years apart. That may seem like quite a long distance but, in astronomical terms, they’re practically next-door neighbors. For comparison, the Andromeda Galaxy is the Milky Way’s closest neighbor at roughly 2.5 million light-years away.

We’re celebrating two years of science for @NASAWebb!

The second anniversary image from the largest telescope in space shows two interacting galaxies called the Penguin (NGC 2936) and the Egg (NGC 2937), entwined in a slow cosmic dance: https://t.co/x4GImWwTRw pic.twitter.com/po60sNkQQN

— NASA (@NASA) July 12, 2024

Before the two galaxies began interacting with each other, the Penguin (NGC 2936) was more of a perfect spiral. But, over time, gravity from the Egg (NGC 2937) began to pull on some of the Penguin’s sparser areas of gas and dust. This is what caused the formation of new stars, which are visible in the fish in the Penguin’s “beak” and the feathers in its “tail.”

The Penguin’s newer stars are immersed in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a type of material that Webb’s instruments are especially good at detecting. The wispy orange shapes that appear between its beak and tail feathers are made up of dust.

“Today, its galactic center gleams like an eye, its unwound arms now shaping a beak, head, backbone, and fanned-out tail,” according to NASA.

The Egg, meanwhile, has maintained its elliptical shape. It has less dust and gas than the Penguin and, thus, has less new star formation. The Egg is also filled with older stars.

The new portrait is just the latest example of all that Webb has been able to accomplish since it started sending images back to Earth two years ago. The telescope launched in December 2021 as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope after more than three decades of planning and construction. The $11 billion device spent six months in orbit before President Joe Biden revealed its first images in July 2022.

Since then, NASA has been churning out an array of dazzling images and groundbreaking discoveries from Webb, each more impressive than the last. Using its infrared-capturing instruments, the telescope has captured detailed images of Uranus’ rings, the Pillars of Creation and the Horsehead Nebula. Webb has also detected the earliest known black hole merger, evidence of methane and carbon dioxide on a distant exoplanet and asteroid belts around a young star.

In two short years, the telescope has “transformed our view of the universe, enabling the kind of world-class science that drove NASA to make this mission a reality,” says Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, in a statement.

“Webb is providing insights into longstanding mysteries about the early universe and ushering in a new era of studying distant worlds, while returning images that inspire people around the world and posing exciting new questions to answer,” he adds. “It has never been more possible to explore every facet of the universe.”

The telescope has allowed scientists to look back in time, offering views of early galaxies that could reshape our understanding of the Big Bang. Webb has also shed new light on nearby celestial bodies, such as the Trappist-1 planetary system just 41 light-years away.

But among all these achievements, one big question remains: Will Webb help discover alien life? Probably not, but it may help find “potentially habitable planets,” says Jane Rigby, Webb’s senior scientist, to the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach.

“Personally I don’t think Webb is going to find life,” she adds. “It’s not built to do it.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.