Infrared Image of Galaxy Pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

This is an infrared image of the galaxy pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298 taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. The infrared light pierces through the dust lanes and shows significantly more stars than seen in visible light. In the infrared, the edge-on NGC 4302 is brighter than in the visible view. The tilted galaxy NGC 4298's spiral arms aren't as obvious in infrared, because the infrared light glows through the dust that marks the arms in visible light. This image represents the sort of view the James Webb Space Telescope will have when it is launched in late 2018. Webb's infrared vision will slice through dust to see the stars embedded in it.

About the colours

This image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using two different cameras and filters isolating the broad wavelength ranges. The color arises by assigning different hues (colors), to each monochromatic image. In this case, the colors are: Cyan: F125W Orange: F160W

About the data

These datasets are from the HST proposal 14913 , M. Mutchler, J. Green, Z. Levay, D. Smith, and R. Villard (STScI), and image processing by I. Momcheva and J. DePasquale (STScI).