NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured a stunning view of Arp 220, an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG), located in the constellation Serpens, 250 million light-years from Earth.
Arp 220 is actually the merger of two spiral galaxies that began colliding about 700 million years ago, resulting in an intense burst of star formation.
Today, Arp 220 is home to about 200 massive star clusters, residing in a dense, dusty region no larger than 5% of the Milky Way's diameter.
Arp 220's brightness in infrared light made it an ideal target for the James Webb Space Telescope.
In fact, the galaxy has a luminosity of more than a trillion suns, which dwarfs the brightness of the more modest Milky Way galaxy by about 10 billion suns, and that makes it the closest and brightest of the three galaxy mergers closest to Earth.
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