James Webb Space Telescope

[SubGod22]

I absolutely love the Webb telescope. I just happened to randomly google it yesterday and saw this new pic of Neptune. I'm not going to pretend to fully understand the scientific value and purpose of it; I just love the pics we get and wish we had them more frequently.

[SubGod22]

Galaxy Twinkling with Universe's Oldest Stars Discovered by Astronomers

The James Webb Space Telescope recently made its debut with the “Deep Field” image, but as we are absorbed by the beautiful colors of near-infinity, scientists have used the data behind the shot to identify a very old and fascinating object in space.

Named the “Sparkler,” it’s a “globular cluster” nine billion light years away. The light as it’s reaching us is as it was just 4.5 billion years after the Big Bang, meaning just after it became possible for stars to form.

JWST’s high-resolution snapshot contains thousands of galaxies and dense groups of millions of stars, but for co-lead author Dr. Kartheik Iyer, the most interesting were ancient collections of stars from a galaxy’s infancy that can contain clues about its earliest phases of formation and growth.

“Looking at the first images from JWST and discovering old globular clusters around distant galaxies was an incredible moment, one that wasn’t possible with previous Hubble Space Telescope imaging,” said Iyer.

The Sparkler got its name for the compact objects appearing as small yellow-red dots surrounding it, referred to by the researchers as ‘sparkles,’ and which turned out to be the globular clusters.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on the unveiling of the telescope’s first images, said that the Deep Field contained very little of the galaxy, approximately as much as if one were to hold a grain of sand on the end of their finger, extend their arm and hand and measure the sand grain against the sky itself.

Incredibly though, examination of the globular clusters spotted in this tiny area of space revealed that five of the clusters were among the oldest ever recorded.

[SubGod22]

Photo of the Pillars of Creation Shows the Lens Upgrade of Webb vs Hubble: A Heavenly View

The James Webb Space Telescope has been a heck of a software update. Just look at this iconic space feature, the Pillars of Creation.

The left side image was made by the Hubble telescope, while the right-side image was taken with Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam), revealing so much more celestial activity.

Newly formed stars pop out in shades of pink, red, and crimson. Still-forming stars that remain hidden deep in the dusty pillars resemble molten lava, and fully formed blue and yellow stars sprinkle the scene.

Located in the Eagle Nebula, around 6,500 light years away, the Pillars of Creation have iconized space telescope imagery. The largest pillar is so big, it would take four light years to go from tip to tail. They are mostly made of cold hydrogen despite their fiery appearance.

The difference is amazing.

[SubGod22]

Sci Tech Daily - James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Oldest Star Clusters in the Universe

A team of astronomers used the James Webb Telescope (JWST) to identify the most distant globular clusters ever discovered. These dense groups of millions of stars may be relics containing the first and oldest stars in the universe.

The early analysis of Webb’s First Deep Field image, which depicts some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, was published recently in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The work was conducted by a team of Canadian astronomers, including experts from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science.

“JWST was built to find the first stars and the first galaxies and to help us understand the origins of complexity in the universe, such as the chemical elements and the building blocks of life,” says Lamiya Mowla, a post-doctoral researcher at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and co-lead author of the study, which was carried out by the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team.

“This discovery in Webb’s First Deep Field is already providing a detailed look at the earliest phase of star formation, confirming the incredible power of JWST.”

[Kung Wu]

Any chance this telescope can find Xavier Bell's missing air ball?

[WstateU]

Any chance this telescope can find Xavier Bell's missing air ball?

Might want to look for Jalen Ricks’s also… it’s way up there.

[SubGod22]

Six Enormous Galaxies Detected from the Dawn of Our Universe: 'Our First Glimpse Back This Far'

Six enormous galaxies that formed just half a billion years after the Big Bang have been detected by astronomers.

They contain some of the first stars that lit up the cosmos, but the really cool part is that they’re much bigger than anyone thought was possible.

The precise-ish date is about 13 billion years ago. One of the six is believed to have as many stars as the present-day Milky Way but in a space 30 times more compact.

“We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time,” said co-author Dr. Joel Leja, of Penn State University, who wielded the James Webb Space Telescope’s unparalleled reach and clarity to make the discovery.

“But we have discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”

The first dataset from NASA’s JWST reveals objects just as mature as ours formed 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was only three percent of its current age.

The telescope is equipped with infrared-sensing instruments capable of detecting light emitted by the most ancient stars and galaxies.

“This is our first glimpse back this far so it’s important we keep an open mind about what we are seeing,” adds Dr. Leja. “While the data indicates they are likely galaxies I think there is a real possibility a few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes.”

“Regardless, the amount of mass we discovered means the known mass in stars at this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought. Even if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change.”

“We’ve been informally calling these objects ‘universe breakers’ and they have been living up to their name so far,” he said.

[SubGod22]

Webb Reveals Yet More Never-Before-Seen Details in Cassiopeia A - Exploding Star

In a stunning new picture from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a recently exploded star is lit up in a dozen colors, with each carrying a different explanation.

More than just beauty, the image helps scientists understand one of the most important phenomena in space: the presence of dust.

Scientists have known for decades that galaxies are filled with dust clouds of heavy metals, but they haven’t had conclusive evidence that their chief culprit, supernovae, is in fact the source.

In the new infrared image from James Webb, the supernova Cassiopeia A is dissected 340 years after its fuse first blew. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, and as such offers an excellent opportunity to study one.

The top and left sides of the image are lit up in red and orange from the energy of the explosion impacting the surrounding gas and dust, while the inner, pink-white circle studded with knots is the remains of the star itself.

The inside is the so-called “Green Monster,” an ode to Fenway Park in Boston, which the scientists aren’t sure what to make of. The whole image is 10 light years from side to side.

The story of the explosion of a star is the story of humanity—and everything else for that matter, since all the heavy metals—the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, the gold in our investment accounts—came from the explosions of stars.

I'll never fully grasp or comprehend what any of this means or what they will learn from it all, but I do find it and almost anything else space related to be fascinating.

There's a link in the article to an image that NASA has released that will allow you to zoom in on the image. It's pretty cool.

[SubGod22]

[SubGod22]

[SubGod22]

[SubGod22]

The differences in how we see things with the advancements in technology. Hubble still provides some great shots and plays a role in research, but the way Webb looks at space changes things and what we know and can perceive.

[SubGod22]

There's a thread that I don't fully comprehend, but I'm still fascinated by Webb.

[SubGod22]

NASA Celebrates 'One Year of Science' From Webb Telescope with Jaw-Dropping Image

It’s been a long and successful year for the James Webb Space Telescope, and to mark the anniversary of its entry into service, NASA has shown off Webb’s vibrant picture of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.

“From our cosmic backyard in the solar system to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations,” NASA stated.

The first-anniversary image displays star birth “like it’s never been seen before,” full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.

“It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up,” boast NASA. “Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.”

Two critical differences single out the JWST as such a remarkable machine: the first is that it sees into infrared light—a spectrum which the human eye cannot see, and the second is that it orbits the second LaGrange Point a million miles from Earth, removing any light pollution of our world from diluting its imagery.

[SubGod22]

Webb Telescope Detects Water Vapor Just Hanging Out in Space Inside Fascinating Goldilocks Zone

In a fascinating star system 370 light-years from Earth, scientists studying with the James Webb Space Telescope have found water vapor hanging about at exactly the same distance from the system star as Earth sits from the Sun.

The discovery is being heralded as an important milestone in the understanding of how rocket planets come to contain water; perhaps the water is there in space while the planet is being formed, such as in the case of this star, PDS 70.

A K7-type star in the constellation Centaurus, PDS 70 boasts two large, dusty ‘accretion disks,’ a term that refers to the rings of gas and dust around young stars that will either be slowly expelled into space or will coalesce into planets. The space between these two disks is 5 billion miles, or very near the distance between Earth and Pluto.

This vast in-between contains two still-forming, Jupiter-like planets: PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c, but the major discovery was the presence of water vapor at 94 million miles from the star, almost exactly the distance from which Earth sits from the sun. Sometimes called the “Goldilocks Zone” for being not too hot and not too cold, it’s also the area that has the greatest chance known to scientists thus far of having a rocky, terrestrial world capable of supporting liquid water.

This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets.

Earth is riddled with H2O, and it’s also dispersed throughout other rocky and icy worlds in the solar system, such as Mars. How it got there is still up for debate. Common considerations are that frozen water arrived on Earth and other bodies onboard comets or much larger objects called planetesimals which we know collided as often as perhaps once every day in the earliest period of Earth’s history as an already-formed rocky planet.