the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
Psalm 8:3
"NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies (NASA, 29 Jan 2024). Spiral galaxies, the public’s favorite deep-sky objects, are beautiful for their symmetry. The project combines data from multiple wavelengths from orbital and ground-based telescopes.
This image of spiral NGC 628 shows how the information from Hubble (lower right) and JWST (upper left) complement one another to permit physicists to analyze the processes that create the “staggering structure” inherent in spiral galaxies.
The caption of the JWST full image notes a peculiar fact: “The spiraling filamentary structure looks somewhat like a cross section of a nautilus shell.”
"NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies (NASA, 29 Jan 2024). Spiral galaxies, the public’s favorite deep-sky objects, are beautiful for their symmetry. The project combines data from multiple wavelengths from orbital and ground-based telescopes.
"These Webb images are part of a large, long-standing project, the
Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide. Before Webb took these images, PHANGS was already brimming with data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, including observations in ultraviolet, visible, and radio light. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared contributions have provided several new puzzle pieces."
This image of spiral NGC 628 shows how the information from Hubble (lower right) and JWST (upper left) complement one another to permit physicists to analyze the processes that create the “staggering structure” inherent in spiral galaxies.
The caption of the JWST full image notes a peculiar fact: “The spiraling filamentary structure looks somewhat like a cross section of a nautilus shell.”
The similarity relates to the Fibonacci Series, a mathematical
relationship of numbers that is found in many apparently-unrelated phenomena, from spiral galaxies to hurricanes to pine cones and sunflowers.
*No one fully understands why such disparate structures, from a spiral galaxy to a nautilus shell, follows this relationship despite differing in size by many orders of magnitude.
One thing, though, is certain: humans find the structures to be beautiful. They relate also to the “Golden Ratio” proportions that architects and artists know are most pleasing to the eye.
For an exquisite animation showing Fibonacci numbers in nature."
CEH
