Tag: James Webb Space Telescope

Youthful galaxy in the early universe was a heavy metal rebel

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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

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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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A new ultrablack coating for telescopes could bring more stars into focus

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The images we get these days from advanced telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, undoubtedly leave us in awe and wonder of galaxies that exist light-years away from Earth. But what if these pictures could be improved even more?Researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences hope they’re able to help with just that through their development of a thin, ultrablack film coating for aerospace-grade magnesium alloys. Think about it this way — when you want to see the stars…

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James Webb Space Telescope sees the infrared skeleton of a galaxy (image)

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The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared vision has transformed our view of a large, barred spiral galaxy, revealing its skeleton of dust illuminated by the glow of young stars. Visible-light images of NGC 1559, such as those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, show a glowing whirlpool of light with bright, young star clusters scattered across spiral arms laced with lanes of black dust.  The JWST has now peered past the glare, its infrared vision revealing the galaxy’s innards. The JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) sees starlight filtered through the obscuring…

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James Webb telescope finds ancient galaxy larger than our Milky Way, and it’s threatening to upend cosmology

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a galaxy in the early universe that’s so massive, it shouldn’t exist, posing a “significant challenge” to the standard model of cosmology, according to the study authors. The galaxy, called ZF-UDS-7329, contains more stars than the Milky Way, despite having formed only 800 million years into the universe’s 13.8 billion-year life span. This means they were somehow born without dark matter seeding their formation, contrary to what the standard model of galaxy formation suggests. How this could have happened is unclear, but…

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James Webb Space Telescope spies a newborn star in its cosmic crib (image)

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have observed the luminous cloud of material that surrounds a newborn star, cocooning it in a crib of gas and dust. These so-called Herbig-Haro objects are created when stellar winds and jets of gas billow from newborn stars, causing shockwaves that slam into the gas and dust from which the star was born at high speeds.  This particular Herbig-Haro object, which can be seen dominating the bottom half of this stunning new JWST image, captured with the telescope’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) instrument,…

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Exoplanet ‘haze’ makes it harder to identify water on alien worlds. Scientists may have a solution

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One of the primary tasks of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to scan the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of habitability. And, as far as we know, water is necessary for life. So naturally, detecting the presence of water in and around alien worlds is a high priority for planetary scientists. There is, however, one problem. Getting a clear, unfiltered view of what might be present in exoplanet atmospheres can be difficult due to the presence of something seemingly trivial — haze. It’s likely that organic hazes of…

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