The James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of a galaxy known as the Phantom Galaxy in a stunning image showing its spiral shape released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, AFP reports.

James Webb, launched in late 2021 and operating since July, has produced spectacular images of Jupiter, nebulae and other distant galaxies, providing scientists with a wealth of new data to analyze.

Published on Monday, it shows M74, or the ghost galaxy, with its bright blue core and flawless spiral, as observed by the MIRI instrument, which studies the mid-infrared range and is the result of a collaboration between Europeans and Americans.

“Webb detected tiny filaments of gas and dust in bright spiral branches extending from the center of this image,” ESA said on its website, noting that the galaxy had already been observed by the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990 and still in operation. .

The European agency, which developed the telescope together with NASA, also notes that the “lack of gas” gives a clearer picture of the stars at the center of the galaxy, located about 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.

The collected data “will allow astronomers to identify star-forming regions of the galaxy, make precise measurements of the mass and age of star clusters, and better understand the nature of tiny dust particles drifting in interstellar space,” ESA said.

The James Webb Telescope is a $10 billion engineering gem that makes observations 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

This is the first time that CO2 has been detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, meaning a planet outside our solar system, researchers announced last week.