News > James Webb Space Telescope captures the glowing bright heart of a galaxy

James Webb Space Telescope captures the glowing bright heart of a galaxy

The European Space Agency (ESA) shared this image of a face-on spiral galaxy that is approximately 90,000 light-years in diameter and sits 220 million light-years away from our planet in the constellation Pegasus. The image is dominated by the galaxy’s extremely bright “active galactic nucleus.” The active galactic nucleus (AGN) of NGC 7469—the spiral galaxy in the image—is so bright because of the light emitted by the dust and gas as it falls into the black hole at the galaxy’s centre.