NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of interacting galaxies Arp 142 seems to sing in primary colors. The Egg shows up as a tiny, teal-colored oval, because it is made up of old stars and has lost or used up most of its gas and dust. At right, the Penguin’s star-forming regions are represented in pink and purple, and contain smoke-like material known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured visible light when observing Arp 142, nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg, with its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in 2013. At right is NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared light view of the same region, taken with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). In Hubble’s visible light image, a dark brown dust lane begins across the Penguin’s “beak” and extends through its body and along its back. In Webb’s near-infrared view, this dust lane is significantly fainter. The Egg itself looks similar in both images, but in Webb’s view, the galaxy shines so brightly that it causes diffraction spikes to slightly extend its gleam. The galaxy at top right appears about the same size, but many more pinpricks of stars appear in Webb’s view.