Kelly Lepo
I'll be at the First Year of JWST Science Conference this week at @spacetelescope.
If you want to follow along, there will be is livestream: https://cloudproject.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ba3f9ab0-1572-4424-973c-b07a00f03f83
No registration is required.
Edit: New live stream link because of some technical difficulties with YouTube.
#JWSTYearOne #Astrodon
Kelly Lepo
One thing to come out of several talks this morning, is the importance of stellar flares in the Trappist 1 system.
The red dwarf in the Trappist 1 system has several flares per day that are similar to flares that happen once per month on the Sun. This tends to complicate planet transit methods and can cause false detections of molecules if you are not careful.
#JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
And now we move into the exoplanet part of the afternoon.
Results from Nikku Madhusudhan about exoplanet
K2-18 b. They have the first detection of methane and carbon dioxide in a habitable-zone exoplanet.
Press release: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-139
Kelly Lepo
Ok, actual science results from Andrey Kravtsov and GRUMPY. You can use a model designed for nearby dwarf galaxies and use it to fit the earliest galaxies. It works really well, as long as you have random, "bursty" star formation (which is reasonable).
No new physics required; very ancient galaxies follow the same rules as nearby galaxies. JWST has not disproven the Big Bang. #JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
From Andrey Kravtsov, we called our galaxy modeling code GRUMPY. It ends in "PY" because it was written in Python, but mostly it was a forced acronym to honor Grumpy Cat (RIP), but also "we wrote it in 2020 and that was how we were feeling".
#JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
Neat results from Rogier Windhorst from JWST PEARLS.
A type Ia supernova at a redshift of z=1.783 (about 3.7 billion years ago) showed up as multiple images in a galaxy warped by gravitational lensing.
Webb's first deep field, SMACS 0723, is rather close to the Magellanic clouds, so there are more stars in the foreground from the Magellanic stream than an area of the sky 180 degrees away.
Kelly Lepo
@spacetelescope And the YouTube link for the First Year of #JWST Science Conference is working now: https://www.youtube.com/live/pAPeLRl5rT0?si=OwuW37-p7oWbkwq4
Kelly Lepo
New observations of the debris desk around the star Beta Pictoris from Marshal Perrin. They see a new feature they are calling the "cat's tail" which may be dust being blow out of the system after a collision of two planetesimals.
#JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
Lot of neat stuff about JWST observations of supernovas from Tea Temim this morning, including an update on the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant observations.
What are those bubbles in the area known as the "green monster?" The team's current thinking is that in the past, dense clumps of ejecta shot through the gas near the star, and now interactions between the gas and the supernova shocks are highlighting the "bullet hole" structures.
Kelly Lepo
Conclusion after tonight's conference social hour: Astronomers' ability to pay attention to a science talk outside of their field is greatly enhanced if there are pretty pictures. Great for people studying nearby galaxies and nebulas. Sorry early galaxies folks, all of your objects are just red blobs. #JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
Ooh! The first detection of clear signals of a compact object at the center of the supernova remnant SN 1987A! It's probably either a cooling neutron star or a pulsar wind nebula.
#JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
A neat interdisciplinary science story from Olivier Berne and the PDRs4All project.
They saw this forrest of emission lines in their observations of the Orion Bar, a star forming region. After talking with some chemists, they found it was from the Methyl-Cation (CH3+).
Chemists had been studying it for years, but didn't have a great spectrum. The JWST data is better than anything that could be measured on Earth. With the new data, they were able to make a much better model.
Kelly Lepo
One idea from the morning talks on supermassive black holes in galaxies in the early universe.
Do the black holes form from the direct collapse of massive gas clouds: "the heavy seed model", or from massive stars: "the light seed model"? The evidence now favors heavy seeds. But, it could be both, and they might look different.
I'm reminded of the debate about what makes white dwarf supernovas. Both of the two competing scenarios may happen, and one may make unusual supernovas.
#JWSTYearOne
Kelly Lepo
Results out from Adam Riess, the Hubble Tension remains after observations of cepheid variable stars with JWST's clearer near-infrared view.
Measurements of the local value of the expansion rate of the universe (from the cosmic distance ladder) disagree with the rate you predict from measurements made in the early universe (CMB).
Blog post:
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/early-highlights/webb-confirms-accuracy-of-universes-expansion-rate-measured-by-hubble
#JWSTYearOne
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