Scientists in awe of detail in telescope photos

The gas and dust stand out in stark shades of orange and red, thanks to JWST's infrared instruments

Highly detailed images of 19 spiral galaxies have been released by Nasa.

They were captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and are being analysed by scientists from the University of Oxford.

The telescope was launched into orbit two years ago and is fitted with highly sensitive instruments that allow it to view older and more distant objects than Hubble.

The university said the "extraordinary images will provide several new puzzle pieces for astronomers and astrophysicists around the world".

The telescope captured millions of stars in the images, with older stars appearing blue and clustered at the galaxies’ cores

Thomas Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford's physics department, has been leading work on processing data from the latest pictures.

"The amount of detail in these images is overwhelming - in a good way," he said

"It means that we may be able to fill in more of the gaps in our knowledge about the structure and evolution of galaxies, star formation, the life-cycle of stars and so much more."

The image of NGC 4254 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by its central region, which has a light blue haze

He added that working with the data so early in the JWST's lifecycle had been a "privilege and a challenge".

"The images, I think, speak for themselves: this is the sharpest view we have ever had of galaxies at these wavelengths."

They were made public on Monday by scientists involved in a project called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) that operates across several major astronomical observatories.

Shades of white, yellow, orange, and red are all vivid in the "messy" NGC 5068 spiral galaxy