James Webb Space Telescope

[SubGod22]

Cosmic Question Mark Spotted in Deep Space By the Webb Space Telescope

A question mark in deep space has been spotted inside pictures captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA astronomers had trained their sights on a tightly bound pair of actively-forming stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47.

But, some observers focused instead on a tiny, but intriguing, detail in the high-resolution near-infrared light image produced.

Visible in the scene from 1,470 light-years away is a small but distinct question mark shape.

“Is the universe asking us something?” posits an article at Space.com.

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NASA Just Found an Ocean World with Atmosphere - The Best Place to Look for Life in Our Galaxy

Earlier this month operators at Webb identified a planet that may contain both a protective atmosphere and a surface covered entirely in oceans—also known as a Hycean world.

One of the main functions of the James Webb Space Telescope is to advance the search for life in the universe by being able to study exoplanets as no other observatory can, and using Webb’s spectrographs, scientists were able to determine that this Hycean world is the perfect place to search.

K2-18b lies 120 light years away from Earth in the constellation Leo, where it orbits the habitable zone of a red dwarf star called K2-18. Believed to be 8.6 times larger than Earth, the abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia detected on the planet supports the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

Life emerged under such conditions on Earth, and finding them elsewhere is our best bet to determining if we are not alone in the galaxy.

Promisingly, these initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this is only produced by life. The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments.

[SubGod22]

The Hubble and Webb Telescopes Join to Create Unprecedented Photo of Universe

In a tour de force of techno-stargazing, NASA trained both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes on the same patch of galaxies to create an unprecedented view of the universe.

The resulting panchromatic image combines visible and infrared light of the galaxy cluster MACS0416—4.3 billion light-years from Earth.

It includes a bounty of galaxies outside the cluster and a sprinkling of sources that vary over time, likely due to gravitational lensing, the distortion and amplification of light from distant background sources.

To make the image, in general the shortest wavelengths of light were color-coded blue, the longest wavelengths red, and intermediate wavelengths green. The broad range of wavelengths, from 0.4 to 5 microns, yields a particularly vivid landscape of galaxies, NASA explains on its website.

Those colors give clues to galaxy distances. The bluest galaxies are relatively nearby and often show intense star formation, as best detected by Hubble, while the redder galaxies tend to be more distant as detected by Webb. Some galaxies also appear very red because they contain copious amounts of cosmic dust that tends to absorb bluer colors of starlight.

I enjoy these things.

[SubGod22]

New James Webb Image Shows 'Crowded, Tumultuous' Heart of Our Galaxy in Never-Before-Seen Detail

The James Webb Space Telescope recently took a picture of the C region of the Sagittarius constellation, deep in the galactic center of the Milky Way in order to find what’s going on inside.

Located about 300 light years from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, and 25,000 light years from Earth, Sag. C is a star-forming region that is filled with yet unexplained phenomena.

“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” said Professor Jonathan Tan, an astronomer at the University of Virginia.

The image was generated with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument, which color-coded some of the interesting features as a result of seeing the light in such long wavelengths.

The great mess of cyan-colored material in the center is ionized hydrogen, which happens when some energetic particle collides with a hydrogen atom and causes it to become positively charged via a loss of its electron. The collision in the image could be coming from the blacker region that seems to be driving a wedge into the cyan color.

That black wedge is deceiving, for though it may appear to be emptiness, it’s actually the result of the material inside it being so dense that light from stars behind it can’t shine through. The material in question will coalesce into stars in the coming millennia.

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See the James Webb Telescope's Stunning New Image of Uranus with its Rings and Moons Clearer Than Ever

Among all the things that the James Webb Space Telescope has taught us, one of the most surprising for the layman has probably been that all the outer planets have rings.

The rings of Saturn are well known, but Webb has already shown that the ice planet of Neptune sports rings as well, and now, Uranus has been shown shining like a bright blue eyeball.

When NASA’s spacecraft Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the planet appeared to be a nearly featureless, solid blue ball. Webb used its infrared view to show that it’s much more dynamic and intriguing. Rings, moons, storms, and a bright, north polar cap grace these new images.

Because Uranus is tipped on its side, the polar cap appears to become more prominent as the planet’s pole points towards the Sun and receives more sunlight—a time called solstice. Uranus reaches its next solstice in 2028, and astronomers will watch for changes in the planet’s atmosphere.

Uranus also spins on its side at a tilt of about 98 degrees, giving it the most extreme seasons in the solar system. For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the Sun shines over one pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a dark, 21-year-long winter.

[Kung Wu]

New James Webb Image Shows 'Crowded, Tumultuous' Heart of Our Galaxy in Never-Before-Seen Detail

Umm, that blue mass looks disturbingly similar to an ultrasound scan of a child in the womb. If you smoke peyote the red pupils and the black hole being an ear is easy to see too:

[WstateU]

Umm, that blue mass looks disturbingly similar to an ultrasound scan of a child in the womb. If you smoke peyote the red pupils and the black hole being an ear is easy to see too:

[pogo]

Is that large protrusion his uh....no that's a foot.

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Scientists Spot Mysterious Aurora on Distant Celestial Object

Everyone who’s given five seconds to look into it knows that the Aurora Borealis is cause by charged particles from the Sun interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field, but what if there were no Sun, could there still be an aurora?

That’s what astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope seem to have observed after finding an object displaying what is probably an aurora like the familiar Northern Lights on our world.

The object in question is a brown dwarf, something larger than Jupiter but smaller than a star, known as W1935, and unlike any planets in our solar system that experience aurorae, it’s an isolated object in space with no nearby star to create one.

“This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source of energy to heat its upper atmosphere and make the methane glow,” NASA writes.

The findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans this week.

To help explain the mystery of the infrared emission from methane, the team turned to our solar system.

“Methane in emission is a common feature in gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. The upper-atmosphere heating that powers this emission is linked to aurorae.

On Earth, the energetic particles that create the Northern Lights cascade down into our atmosphere along magnetic field lines near Earth’s poles, colliding with gas molecules and creating eerie, dancing curtains of light.

Jupiter and Saturn have similar auroral processes that involve interacting with the solar wind, but they also get auroral contributions from nearby active moons like Io (for Jupiter) and Enceladus (for Saturn).

More mysteries of the universe stuff.

[ShockTalk]

Scientists Spot Mysterious Aurora on Distant Celestial Object



More mysteries of the universe stuff.

Looks like the aurora may have been happening on both polar areas.

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Astronomers Detect Oldest Black Hole Ever Observed Dating 'From the Dawn of the Universe'

Researchers have discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the dawn of the universe, and found that it’s still in the process of consuming its host galaxy.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the James Webb Space Telescope to detect the black hole, which dates from 400 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago.

The results, which lead author Professor Roberto Maiolino says are “a giant leap forward”, are reported in the journal Nature.

That this surprisingly massive black hole—a few million times the mass of our Sun—even exists so early in the universe challenges our assumptions about how black holes form and grow.

Astronomers believe that the supermassive black holes found at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their current size over billions of years. But the size of this newly-discovered black hole suggests that they might form in other ways: they might be ‘born big’ or they can consume matter at a rate that’s five times higher than had been thought possible.

According to standard models, supermassive black holes form from the remnants of dead stars, which collapse and may form a black hole about a hundred times the mass of the Sun. If it grew in an expected way, this newly detected black hole would take about a billion years to grow to its observed size. The catch is that the universe was not yet a billion years old when this black hole was detected.

“It’s very early in the universe to see a black hole this massive, so we’ve got to consider other ways they might form,” said Maiolino, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Kavli Institute of Cosmology.

He suggests that because the first galaxies to form were extremely gas-rich “they would have been like a buffet for black holes.”

Indeed, this ancient black hole seems to have the metabolism of one who frequents buffets, because the scientists determined it’s gobbling up surrounding matter much more vigorously than its siblings at later epochs.

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Newly Released NASA Collection of Spiral Galaxies May Leave Viewers 'Mesmerized'

These jaw-dropping pictures of 13 different spiral galaxies were released in a bundle by NASA, and are the result of the space agency’s work using the James Webb Space Telescope.

It wasn’t just hobbyist stargazing however, they are actually part of a long-standing project called the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide.

“It’s oh-so-easy to be absolutely mesmerized by these spiral galaxies. Follow their clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to their centers, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes – active supermassive black holes,” NASA wrote alongside the photo dump.

“Only NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can deliver highly detailed scenes of nearby galaxies in a combination of near and mid-infrared light.”

One especially cool part of their release to the public is that it replicates how the NASA astronomers themselves were able to see them for the first time—when they flooded the NASA servers after being processed into visible light.

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary. They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades,” explains Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”

They are pretty sweet pics.

Direct link to the Webb Telescope page with all pictures shared individually at the bottom

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Scientists Have Spotted a 'Bejeweled Ring' in Space - Revealing a Sparkling Quasar

An intriguing new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows a quasar sparkling in the cosmos.

Quasars are the blazing centers of active galaxies, and are powered by supermassive black holes feeding on titanic quantities of gas.

Astronomers were able to observe the quasar, known as RX J1131-1231, thanks to gravitational lensing.

One of the consequences of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, letting astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or far away.

RX J1131-1231, located roughly six billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater, is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, showing the foreground galaxy smearing the image of the background quasar into a bright arc, created by four images of the object.

The composite was named the Webb Telescope’s ‘Picture of the Month’, and was described by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a “bejeweled ring”.

NASA shared the image with the heading, “Diamonds of the season,” explaining that these glittering “gems” are actually four images of the same thing — an extremely bright quasar.

[SubGod22]

[SubGod22]

An interesting thread if you're into this sort of thing.