Pan video: NGC 4490 and NGC 4485

For this new ESA/Webb Picture of the Month, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has spied a pair of dwarf galaxies engaged in a gravitational dance. These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Aside from the Milky Way’s own dwarf companions (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), this is the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf system where astronomers have directly observed both a gas bridge and resolved stellar populations. Together NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form the system Arp 269, which is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. At such a close distance (and with Webb’s impressive ability to peer through dusty cosmic clouds) these galaxies allow astronomers to witness up close the kinds of galaxy interactions that were common billions of years ago.