Notices tagged with jwst

#JWST needs to be very cold to avoid emitting light at the same IR wavelengths as its faint celestial targets.

It does so by hiding behind a huge sunshield, cooling radiatively into the blackness of space.

Although vindicated by the observatory's astonishing performance today, it was a struggle to convince the community of this approach.

This article by Harley Thronson tells of the key role played by Tim Hawarden & other UK astronomers, & the POIROT & Edison concepts.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4877/1

▶ Nobody Expected JWST To Find Signs of Ongoing Eruptions on Makemake

#Eruptions #JWST #NASA #UnchartedTerritories #SpaceTelescope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmzFvZ31ih4

Life on Europa could exist -
1. Around hydrothermal vents near the ocean floor,
2. Just below the icy surface,
3. Or up and down the ocean waters.
One study showed that irradiation of ice on Europa's surface could create enough oxygen and peroxide, which could oxygenate the ocean within a few million years, allowing the existence of complex, multicellular lifeforms.

https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/58/europa-lander-study-2016-report/
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2009.0386
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Habitability
Image source: https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-we-might-find-life-on-europa/
#JWST #Europa
6/n

We have some incredibly powerful telescopes that have given us spectacular views and allowed us to look back to the early days of the universe. But what if we could access an even better telescope that already exists? Using a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, it might be possible to use the sun as a gigantic telescope to peer deep into the cosmos. Space.com has more: https://flip.it/yH22Ur
#Science #Space #SpaceExploration #Sun #JWST #Telescope

Apparently, the Universe has some questions.

#JWST spotted an unusual configuration of a gravitational lens, a hyperbolic umbilic lens. The gravity of a foreground galaxy cluster magnifies and distorts the light from background galaxies.

This cosmic question mark is made of five images of the same background galaxy pair, labeled A-E, an interacting red dusty galaxy and a face-on spiral galaxy. The foreground galaxy cluster is the white hazy ovals.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-128

#Space #Astronomy

New JWST poster alert!

Download and print a mini poster featuring an infrared image of the Phantom Galaxy, NGC 628. The back features a description in both English and Spanish.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/products/01J56VRPSTJNMAC3KASKQQE8SZ

#space #astronomy #Astrodon #JWST

To celebrate its 2nd year of science, #JWST took this image of Arp 142, a pair of interacting galaxies sometimes called the Penguin and the Egg 🐧🥚.

The Penguin is a spiral galaxy whose shape has been distorted by the gravity of the elliptical Egg galaxy. The two are about 100,000 light-years apart and completed a close pass between 25 and 75 million years ago. They will merge into one galaxy hundreds of millions of years from now.
1/

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-124
#space #astronomy #Astrodon

JWST's second anniversary image is here! This is a distorted spiral galaxy at the center and an elliptical galaxy to the left of it. They're called the Penguin and the Egg.

#space #science #jwst

This Quasar-studded Ring is the JWST picture of the month. The 4 "jewels" (3 at the top, 1 at the bottom) are images of the same quasar RX J1131-1231, 6 billion light-years away, whose light has been gravitationally bent by a foreground galaxy (the blue dot). The blue ring is the lensed and smeared image of the quasar's host galaxy.

At the heart of the quasar lies a supermassive black hole (SMBH), which powers the luminous emission from the quasar.

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2406a/
#jwst #quasar
1/n

Today @spacetelescope released 19 images of face-on spiral galaxies from #JWST and #Hubble. The new JWST images were taken as part of the PHANGS program, a survey of nearby galaxies taking high-resolution observations with ALMA, the VLT, Hubble and JWST.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-105

This is now a #PHANGS galaxy stan account. Over the next 19 days, I’ll post a short thread about each one of the galaxies featured in today’s release.
1/

awesome #JWST

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/james-webbs-best-photos-2023?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=user%2Fsciencefocus

Uranus’ Rings and Moons Dazzle in New Webb Image
https://petapixel.com/2023/12/18/uranus-rings-and-moons-dazzle-in-new-webb-image/ #rings #uranus #JWST #NIRCam #infrared

I’m starstruck by this new #JWST image of one of my favorite astronomical objects 🤩

Herbig-Haro 46/47 is a pair of jets launched by young stars, embedded in a dark nebula.

The binary stars responsible for the jets shine brightly in the middle of the image, seen as one point of light with red diffraction spikes.

The two-sided orange lobes were created by earlier outflows. More recent ejections appear as a blue line in the center of the lobes.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-131
#Astronomy #Space

Jupiter is actually quite difficult to observe with #JWST's large mirror. The planet is so bright that researchers had to use clever techniques to avoid saturating the telescope's detectors.

The result of those efforts is this NIRCam image of Jupiter. The white areas are very high-altitude cloud tops. The dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. Auroras, extending to high altitudes above the planet's north and south poles, are seen in red.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-147

Check out this new #JWST image of the Crab Nebula 🤩

The milky smoke-like glow in the nebula's center comes from synchrotron radiation, light produced by charged particles, like electrons, moving around magnetic fields at relativistic speeds.

Curvy wisps outline the structure of the pulsar’s magnetic field, which sculpts and shapes the nebula. A faint ring of white material encircles the pulsar, a tiny white dot, at the very center.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-137

#astronomy #space #SupernovaRemnant

Earlier this week, we saw a new #JWST image of Cassiopeia A. Cas A has been observed with many other telescopes over the years. Let's take a multi-wavelenght tour of the supernova remnant across different types of light.

📷 https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/149/01HGH0SBY44A8SM23AGB1H06F7

1/8

Here is a new 4-color #JWST image of the planet Uranus, along with its rings and moons, adding two filters to the 2-color version released earlier this year.

The labeled blue, star-like things are Uranus' moons, including its five major moons: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. We also see a smattering of the smaller moons near the rings, named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-150

▶ This Massive Black Hole Shouldn't Exist So Early In The Universe #jwst #blackhole #nasa

#amazon #blackhole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EqE71b-u7c

New #JWST image of the star-forming region Sagittarius C. It's about 300 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

The galactic center is a truly bizarre place. It's filled with turbulent, dense, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars. There are also clusters of massive young stars that impact their environment with outflowing winds, jets, and high-energy light.
1/

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-148

#Astronomy #Space #MilkyWay