NASA released its sharpest images yet of a galaxy called Centaurus A, located 11 million light-years from Earth. The pictures were taken by the James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate four years of successful observations. What makes these images special is that they show individual stars and glowing clouds where new stars are being born — detail so fine that earlier telescopes could never capture it Engadget.

Centaurus A has an unusual shape. Dark dust lanes cut across it, making it look warped and twisted. This strange appearance happened because the galaxy collided with another galaxy about 2 billion years ago. At the center of Centaurus A sits an enormous black hole that constantly pulls in material around it, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process Engadget.

To understand why these new images matter, think of the difference between seeing a city from an airplane at night and seeing it from an airplane during the day with a powerful camera. The older Hubble telescope could see Centaurus A, but the thick dust made it hard to pick out details — much like how dust and clouds block the view. Webb is special because it sees in infrared light, which passes through dust the way light passes through a window. This lets Webb show us individual stars hiding inside those dark dust lanes Engadget.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) released multiple versions of the Centaurus A images. The main picture combines data from Webb's two infrared cameras and is labeled weic2615b ESA/Webb. There is also a video that zooms from a wide, ground-based view into Webb's close-up, showing the jump in detail ESA/Webb. Researchers can access all of these images in NASA's public gallery NASA.

Now that scientists can see individual stars in Centaurus A, they can study how the galaxy changed after the ancient merger. They can count and map stars, figure out how old they are, and trace how the collision triggered waves of new star formation. This kind of detailed detective work was not possible before Engadget.

Every year on the anniversary of Webb's launch, NASA and ESA highlight one new discovery. Centaurus A is close enough to show amazing detail and far enough away to tell us about a completely different corner of the universe. The images are now part of a public archive that scientists around the world can study and learn from.