James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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NASA’s Webb Catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms

Nov 16, 2022

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the once-hidden features of the protostar within the dark cloud L1527, providing insight into the beginnings of a new star. These blazing clouds within the Taurus star-forming region are only visible in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).

The protostar itself is hidden from view within the “neck” of this hourglass shape. An edge-on protoplanetary disk is seen as a dark line across the middle of the neck. Light from the protostar leaks above and below this disk, illuminating cavities within the surrounding gas and dust.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... star-forms


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^^^More on that:

Webb Telescope Captures New Star Forming in Hourglass-Shaped Dust Clouds
by Dave Byrnes
November 16, 2022

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — NASA on Wednesday released an image of a bright star-forming region in the Taurus constellation, captured by the infrared cameras of the James Webb Space Telescope.

At the center of the photo is a hot concentration of gas and dust known as a protostar. Protostars occur in nebulae when gravity pulls enough material together to form a rough sphere. The accretion of gas and dust attracts even more matter, slowly building mass and thermal energy. If the protostar becomes dense and hot enough – about 17.9 million degrees Fahrenheit – hydrogen fusion will begin in its core and new star will be born.

The protostar at the center of the Taurus star-forming region, known as L1527, is far from that milestone. It can take millions of years for hydrogen fusion to spark in the core of a newborn star, and NASA estimates that L1527 is only about 100,000 years old.

"L1527 is considered a class 0 protostar, the earliest stage of star formation," NASA stated in a press release accompanying the image. "Protostars like these, which are still cocooned in a dark cloud of dust and gas, have a long way to go before they become full-fledged stars."

L1527 is not even fully spherical yet, NASA said, noting it is more akin to a "small, hot, and puffy clump of gas" only about 20% to 40% the mass of our sun. But the protostar itself is only part of the image. The rest is dominated by flame-colored regions that stretch above and below the bright epicenter in an hourglass shape.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/webb-te ... t-clouds/
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-james-web ... veals.html
by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies.

The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a "hot Saturn"—a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away—known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet's atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.

"The clarity of the signals from a number of different molecules in the data is remarkable," says Mercedes López-Morales, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and one of the scientists who contributed to the new results.

"We had predicted that we were going to see many of those signals, but still, when I first saw the data, I was in awe," López-Morales adds.

The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds in exoplanets might look up close: broken up rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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James Webb telescope produces an unparalleled view of the ghostly light in galaxy clusters
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-james-web ... -view.html
by Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
In clusters of galaxies there is a fraction of stars which wander off into intergalactic space because they are pulled out by huge tidal forces generated between the galaxies in the cluster. The light emitted by these stars is called the intracluster light (ICL) and is extremely faint. Its brightness is less than 1% of the brightness of the darkest sky we can observe from Earth. This is one reason why images taken from space are very valueable for analyzing it.

Infrared wavelengths allow us to explore clusters of galaxies in a different way than with visible light. Thanks to its efficiency at infrared wavelengths and the sharpness of the images of the JWST, IAC researchers Mireia Montes and Ignacio Trujillo have been able to explore the intracluster light from SMACS-J0723.3-7327 with an unprecedented level of detail. In fact the images from the JWST of the center of this cluster are twice as deep as the previous images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.

"In this study we show the great potential of JWST for observing an object which is so faint," explains Mireia Montes, the first author of the article. "This will let us study galaxy clusters which are much further away, and in much greater detail," she adds.
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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New Webb Image Reveals Dusty Disk Like Never Seen Before

Jan 11, 2023

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the inner workings of a dusty disk surrounding a nearby red dwarf star. These observations represent the first time the previously known disk has been imaged at these infrared wavelengths of light. They also provide clues to the composition of the disk.

The star system in question, AU Microscopii or AU Mic, is located 32 light-years away in the southern constellation Microscopium. It’s approximately 23 million years old, meaning that planet formation has ended since that process typically takes less than 10 million years. The star has two known planets, discovered by other telescopes. The dusty debris disk that remains is the result of collisions between leftover planetesimals – a more massive equivalent of the dust in our solar system that creates a phenomenon known as zodiacal light.

“A debris disk is continuously replenished by collisions of planetesimals. By studying it, we get a unique window into the recent dynamical history of this system,” said Kellen Lawson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, lead author on the study and a member of the research team that studied AU Mic.

“This system is one of the very few examples of a young star, with known exoplanets, and a debris disk that is near enough and bright enough to study holistically using Webb’s uniquely powerful instruments,” said Josh Schlieder of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, principal investigator for the observing program and a study co-author.

The team used Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to study AU Mic. With the help of NIRCam's coronagraph, which blocks the intense light of the central star, they were able to study the region very close to the star. The NIRCam images allowed the researchers to trace the disk as close to the star as 5 astronomical units (460 million miles) – the equivalent of Jupiter’s orbit in our solar system.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... een-before


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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and K. Lawson (Goddard Space Flight Center). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI)
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Webb Spies Chariklo Ring System With High-Precision Technique

January 25, 2023

In an observational feat of high precision, scientists used a new technique with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to capture the shadows of starlight cast by the thin rings of Chariklo. Chariklo is an icy, small body, but the largest of the known Centaur population, located more than 2 billion miles away beyond the orbit of Saturn. Chariklo is only 160 miles (250 kilometers) or ~51 times smaller than Earth in diameter, and its rings orbit at a distance of about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the center of the body.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2023/01/25/ ... technique/


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James Webb telescope detects evidence of ancient 'universe breaker' galaxies
Source: The Guardian
The James Webb space telescope has detected what appear to be six massive ancient galaxies, which astronomers are calling “universe breakers” because their existence could upend current theories of cosmology.

The objects date to a time when the universe was just 3% of its current age and are far larger than was presumed possible for galaxies so early after the big bang. If confirmed, the findings would call into question scientists’ understanding of how the earliest galaxies formed.

“These objects are way more massive​ than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a study co-author. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”

The observations come from the first dataset released from Nasa’s James Webb space telescope, which is equipped with infrared-sensing instruments capable of detecting light emitted by the most ancient stars and galaxies. While sifting through images, Dr Erica Nelson, of the University of Colorado Boulder, and a co-author, spotted a series of “fuzzy dots” that appeared unusually bright and unusually red.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... t-galaxies
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