NASA releases photo gallery of 16 ‘cosmic gems’ showing distant galaxies

Space scientists have put together a photo gallery of ‘cosmic gems’ to showcase the variety of sizes, shapes and high-energy features of distant galaxies.

The collection of 16 new images contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra Observatory collected across decades of operation.

That high-energy data has been combined with data from space telescopes like Webb and Hubble, as well as several other arrays including IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array).

Astronomers put galaxies into three main categories: spirals like our own Milky Way with arms emanating from their cores, ellipticals that are older and likely the results of mergers, and irregulars that can encompass a wide range of galactic phenomena. Each image in the gallery highlights those differences.

“Galaxies are like cosmic gems, each with characteristics including size and shape that make them distinct,” said Megan Watzke of the Chandra X-ray Center.”Just as gems reveal the history of Earth through how they were forged over billions of years, these galactic gems are a way to study Earth’s place in our home galaxy of the Milky Way.””By looking outward to other galaxies, we learn more about our own – including clues to its past and future,” she said.