Tag: James Webb Space Telescope

A moon of Uranus could have a hidden ocean, James Webb Space Telescope finds

NeRD

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, could be hiding in a buried liquid water ocean.  The discovery could supply an answer to a mystery surrounding this Uranian moon that has perplexed scientists: the fact Ariel’s surface is covered with a significant amount of carbon dioxide ice. This is puzzling because at the distance Uranus and its moons exist from the sun, 20 times further out from the sun than Earth, carbon dioxide turns to gas and is lost to space. This…

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Alien weather report: James Webb Space Telescope detects hot, sandy wind on 2 brown dwarfs

NeRD

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered stormy weather in the sky of two brown dwarfs in the most detailed weather report yet from such “failed stars.” The two brown dwarfs form a binary pair called WISE 1049AB that was discovered by NASA‘s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2013; the duo sits just 6.5 light-years away from us. They are the closest brown dwarfs to our sun, and thus make an excellent target for the James Webb Space Telescope‘s powerful infrared instruments. A brown dwarf is an object…

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The James Webb Space Telescope is studying an exoplanet’s eternal day — and eternal night

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What’s the James Webb Space Telescope’s favorite movie? Eternal sunshine of the exoplanet WASP-39 b, perhaps. In a new study, data from the James Webb Space Telescope reveals details of this mysterious gas giant exoplanet, which orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth. WASP-39 b is tidally locked to that star, which means the same side of the planet always faces its star. In other words, half of the planet experiences perpetual day, and the other experiences perpetual night. But the dividing line isn’t black and white — there’s a…

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Galactic penguin honors the 2nd anniversary of James Webb Space Telescope’s 1st images

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To celebrate two years since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started sending images back to Earth, NASA has released yet another stunning image taken by the revolutionary space telescope. The second-anniversary JWST image shows two interacting galaxies that make up a single object called Arp 142, which appears like a cosmic penguin with its cosmic egg. Fittingly for a celebration of the JWST’s two years of science results, the new image is a two-for-two. Arp 142’s Penguin and Egg scene comprises two interacting galaxies located around 326 million light-years from…

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James Webb Space Telescope spies never-before-seen star behavior in distant nebula (video, photo)

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The James Webb Space Telescope has taken another extraordinary photo. The subject is the Serpens Nebula, which lies about 1,300 light-years from Earth. And the new JWST image showcases a very special phenomenon long theorized to exist, but never before observed. In the upper left part of the photo are several “protostellar outflows,” or jets of gas erupting out of newborn stars. While we’ve seen such outflows before, we’ve never seen them line up in the same direction as in the JWST image; NASA likens them to “sleet pouring down during…

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Youthful galaxy in the early universe was a heavy metal rebel

NeRD

The most distant carbon ever seen has been discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in a galaxy that we see as it existed just 350 million years after the Big Bang. The detection is notable because not only is it the oldest carbon known, it is the first time that an element heavier than hydrogen or helium — what astronomers call “metals” — has been confirmed in the very early universe. “Earlier research suggested that carbon started to form in large quantities relatively late — about one billion…

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James Webb Space Telescope finds a dusty skeleton in this starburst galaxy’s closet

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The dwarf galaxy NGC 4449 is the star of the show in the James Webb Space Telescope‘s latest cosmic portrait. Located 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs, NGC 4449 has much in common with our very own Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. Both are small and irregular in shape and each has a distinctive bar running through its center. However, whereas the LMC has one extreme region of star formation, which is the 30 Doradus region famously…

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The James Webb Space Telescope may have solved a puffy planet mystery. Here’s how

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A surprisingly low reservoir of methane may explain how a planet around a nearby star grew weirdly puffy, according to new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST(. The finding shows that planetary atmospheres can inflate to remarkable amounts without employing esoteric theories of planet formation, astronomers say. “The Webb data tells us that planets like WASP-107 b didn’t have to form in some odd way with a super small core and a huge gassy envelope,” Michael Line, an extrasolar planetologist at Arizona State University, said in a statement.…

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James Webb Space Telescope sees Orion Nebula in a stunning new light (images)

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The Orion Nebula may be a familiar and well-studied celestial object, but new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show this star-forming cloud of gas and dust in an incredibly new and vibrant light. The Orion Nebula, also known as “Messier 42” (M42), is located around 1,500 light years from Earth toward the constellation of Orion. This makes it the closest large star-forming and stellar nursery to our solar system.  Visible to the naked eye under dark skies, the Orion Nebula has been studied throughout human history, but…

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A failed star and an ammonia trail could reveal how some giant exoplanets form

NeRD

Astronomers now have a way to figure out how gas-giant planets form, thanks to a discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of ammonia “isotopologues,” which are molecules that contain the same elements but with differing numbers of neutrons. The nucleus of an atom is made from a bunch of protons and neutrons, and while the number of protons within an element does not change — for example, carbon atoms always contain six protons and nitrogen atoms always have seven protons — the number of neutrons can vary. When…

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