James Webb telescope captures galaxy shaped like a wagon wheel

Unusual structure of the Cartwheel was caused by an intense collision of two galaxies

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  Uranus is surrounded by 13 rings and 27 small moons as it rotates at a nearly 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit. Photo: Nasa

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  Complex organic molecules similar to smoke or smog in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth. Photo: Nasa

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  A delicate image of dust structures and bright star clusters taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Photo: Nasa

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  Saturn has seven rings with several gaps and divisions between them, as well as 53 known moons. Photo: Nasa

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  Star cluster NGC 346, spiral galaxies NGC 1672 and Messier 74, and the Pillars of Creation, towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas at the heart of the Eagle Nebula. Photo: Nasa

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  An infrared image of Neptune, the only planet in our solar system not visible to the naked eye. Photo: Nasa

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  Every eight years, the two stars in this image are brought together by their orbits – creating colliding streams of gas that, under the right conditions, form a new ring of dust. Photo: Nasa

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  A part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar. Photo: Nasa

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  A crowded field of galaxies, along with stars crowned with the James Webb Space Telescope's signature six-pointed diffraction spikes. Photo: Nasa

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  The NGC 3256 spiral galaxy was formed after a collision of two massive galaxies about 500 million years ago. Photo: Nasa

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  The Wolf-Rayet 124 star, featured in an image combining near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light. Photo: Nasa

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  An hourglass-shaped cloud of dust and gas is illuminated by light from a protostar. Photo: Nasa

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  Two views of the Southern Ring Nebula, which show the planetary nebula as a misshapen oval. Photo: Nasa

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  A composite image of the Cartwheel Galaxy captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in August 2022. AFP

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  A cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, near the Milky Way. Photo: JWST

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  A colour composite image of the Messier 74 galaxy. Photo: JWST

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  The gravity of galaxy cluster MACS0647 bends and magnifies light from the more distant MACS0647-JD. Photo: Nasa

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  The 'Pillars of Creation' — clouds of hydrogen gas and dust 6,500 light years from Earth — captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, left, and James Webb Space Telescope. AP

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  Dust rings resembling a fingerprint created by a rare type of star and its companion. PA

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  Images of the asteroid Dimorphos hours after Nasa crashed a spacecraft into it in September 2022. EPA

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  Neptune and seven of its 14 known moons. AFP

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  Thousands of young stars in a stellar nursery called the Tarantula Nebula. Photo: Nasa

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  A image of an exoplanet — a gas giant with no rocky surface. Photo: Nasa, ESA and CSA

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  Glass-z13, the oldest galaxy to be detected, was formed about 300 million years after the Big Bang. Photo: JWST

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  Jupiter and its moon Europa. Photo: Nasa

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  Jupiter and its moons Europa, Thebe and Metis. Photo: Nasa

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  Another image of Jupiter and some of its 79 moons. Photo: Nasa

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  An image of galaxy cluster Smacs 0723 taken by the James Webb telescope. Photo: Nasa

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  Stephan’s Quintet is an area in space that has five galaxies. Photo: JWST

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  The 'Cosmic Cliffs' of the Carina Nebula. Photo: JWST

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  An anniversary image shows the birth of a star in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. Photo: Nasa

The image of an unusual galaxy shaped like a wagon wheel has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Cartwheel's shape was caused by what US space agency Nasa said was an intense collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy.

The image has helped to reveal details about star formation, the black hole at the centre and how the Cartwheel has changed over billions of years.

It is located 500 million light years away, with two smaller companion galaxies also seen in the detailed shot.

“The collision most notably affected the galaxy’s shape and structure. The Cartwheel Galaxy sports two rings — a bright inner ring and a surrounding, colourful ring,” Nasa said.

“These two rings expand outwards from the centre of the collision, like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it.

“Because of these distinctive features, astronomers call this a ‘ring galaxy’, a structure less common than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.”

Other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, have taken pictures of the galaxy before.

However, the Webb telescope has captured it in greater detail because of its ability to detect infrared light, radiant energy that is invisible to the human eye but which is felt as heat.

“Webb’s observations underscore that the Cartwheel is in a very transitory stage. The galaxy, which was presumably a normal spiral galaxy like the Milky Way before its collision, will continue to transform,” Nasa said.

“While Webb gives us a snapshot of the current state of the Cartwheel, it also provides insight into what happened to this galaxy in the past and how it will evolve in the future.”

The telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day, 2021, and has been sending back unique views of the universe.

The first image from the telescope was revealed by US President Joe Biden on July 11. It showed the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it was 4.6 billion years ago.

On July 20, it detected the oldest known galaxy in the universe, called Glass-z13, which was formed about 300 million years after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

This breaks the record set by its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which spotted GN-z11, a galaxy that was formed 400 million years after the birth of the universe.