Pan video: Infrared, optical, and X-ray image (Hubble, Webb, Chandra, and XMM Newton)

This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an astounding number of galaxies. The objects in this frame span an incredible range of distances, from stars within our own Milky Way, marked by diffraction spikes, to galaxies billions of light-years away.

The star of this field is a group of galaxies, the largest concentration of which can be found just below the centre of this image. These galaxies glow with white-gold light. We see this galaxy group as it appeared when the Universe was 6.5 billion years old, a little less than half the Universe’s current age.

The image combines infrared data from both Webb and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, as well as X-ray data from ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray data, shown in purple, highlights the location of hot gas within the galaxy group.