This version of WR 124 is a combination of Hubble and JWST MIRI data. A press release recently featured the same data, and since this is one of my favorite objects, of course I had to have a go at it. The official release from the ERO team was a little bit dark. I also went ahead and used the same G'MIC processing to remove much of the banding noise from the dark parts of the image, allowing me to make it even brighter.
Red: JWST/MIRI F1800W
Yellow: JWST/MIRI F1280W
Yellow-Green: JWST/MIRI F1130W
Cyan: JWST/MIRI F770W
Blue: HST WF/PC2 F656N
North is 40° clockwise from up.
Tags: Wolf-Rayet star dust nebula expanding 124 HST JWST dust factory
A color composite of JWST commissioning data and some earlier, coincidentally imaged HST data. The nucleus of the galaxy is blatantly active when viewed in infrared with JWST.
Red-orange: JWST/MIRI F560W
Blue-cyan: HST/ACS/WFC F814W
North is 123.96° clockwise from up.
Tags: JWST HST Hubble spiral galaxy stars AGN active galactic nucleus black hole space commissioning
I've done a lot of visualizations of Cas A over the past year plus, and I'm happy to be able to share one. This is one of my favorites! It shows the supernova remnant Cas A in multiwavelength infrared color from JWST, and x-ray from Chandra in cyan. Stars are visible light imagery from Hubble overlaid in their appropriate positions, largely invisible to infrared and x-ray telescopes.
Separated wavelength layers can be viewed at the Chandra website, along with a much more awesome description than I could ever come up with:
chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2024/casa/
There's also a NASA article!
www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-telescopes-chase-down-gre...
North is up.
Tags: supernova remnant x-ray jwst infrared Cas A Cassiopeia A visible stars galaxy local Milky Way explosion star elements astronomy science
A combination of JWST and HST data showing a new view of ultraluminous infrared galaxy Arp 220. Here, I've tried to cut down on the redness because if I were to simply take all the data and throw it together, much of the galaxy would be lost in a red glare. Instead, the central details are actually visible. This is important because the imagery reveals what I presume to be the cores of the two galaxies that merged to create this single disturbed galaxy, not yet fully merged themselves. Prior to JWST observations two cores were already detected, but these new data reveal them in more detail than before.
Surrounding the center are some splotchy red and orange areas representing the MIRI (Mid-Infrared) data. This is essentially glowing dust. That is, the dust emits light in certain mid-infrared wavelengths, revealing it in much greater detail. In visible light, dust requires background illumination to see it or it is otherwise invisible. The eight faint, fuzzy red lines/bars emanating from the center are diffraction spikes caused by support structures of JWST.
Other interesting features include the blue clusters of younger stars resulting from recent star formation brought about when dust and gas collided as the galaxies orbited and merged with one another. Colorful background galaxies were also revealed in JWST data that were previously invisible or below the signal to noise ratio for HST observations. Note that many individual stars and star clusters are visible within the galaxy, thanks to the resolving power of JWST. What may look like noise in this galaxy is actually resolved stars!
Regarding the processing of this image: It took a long time to smooth this out to an aesthetically pleasing image. The shortwave NIRCam imagery is muddled by fine and coarse banding, which makes for a rather unsightly image if not taken care of. I'd like to thank the makers of the open source project G'MIC and specifically Simeon Schmauß for assisting me in greatly reducing and nearly eliminating the banding problems.
Data from the following proposals were used to create this image:
Proposal 2739 (no info as of this post)
An ACS Survey of a Complete Sample of Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the Local Universe
Reddish orange "screen": JWST MIRI F1130W
Red: JWST NIRCam F444W+F356W+F277W
Green: JWST NIRCam F200W+F150W+F090W
Blue: HST F814W+F435W
North is up.
Tags: JWST HST Hubble space telescope galaxy irregular merging merger MIRI mid-infrared near-infrared tidal tail star formation dust emission IC 4553 Arp 220
Finally decided to finish up a version of my own for this beautiful planetary nebula. I did a LOT of cleaning up of the banding issues once again using the G'MIC noise debanding filter. I also decided to do something a little different with that central pool of soft but bright, hazy light. I used one of the filters to mostly remove it, revealing the central details more clearly. This leaves the overall image pretty heavy on the red and orange side of things, but I think it looks pretty cool like this.
This was, of course, part of the early release data after JWST was first launched. You can see the official version and learn a lot more about this planetary nebula over yonder: webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/033/01G70BGT...
Once upon a time, Hubble looked upon this nebula, as well... and I did a version of that, too. flic.kr/p/gJ3NzH
Central subtraction: JWST/NIRCam F405N-F444W
Red-Orange: JWST/NIRCam F444W-470N, F212N
Yellow: JWST/NIRCam F356W
Teal: JWST/NIRCam F187N
Blue: JWST/NIRCam F090W
North is 111.51° clockwise from up.
Tags: JWST planetary nebula infrared dust gas star NGC3132 3132