James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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JWST's First Image of TRAPPIST-1 – One of Our Best Candidates for Finding Life
by James Felton
July 26, 2022

Introduction:
(IFL Science) An amateur on Reddit has created the first image of the TRAPPIST-1 system using data from JWST. Exoplanet fans will be excited to hear that JWST – a telescope so powerful it makes Hubble look like someone has smeared their thumb on the lens – has already taken a long first look at the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Using publicly available data from the JWST, Redditor arizonaskies2022 was able to piece together the first image of the star, potentially while one of its planets was transiting it, though this has not yet been confirmed.

"Both images are public raw data files I found and downloaded from MAST website," Arizonaskies2022 explained on the JWST subreddit. "I did minimal processing neither image is cropped just a little stretch and color."

TRAPPIST-1 is exciting to astronomers for a number of reasons, not least because it has seven roughly Earth-sized planets orbiting around it, with three in the habitable zone. The ultra-cool red dwarf is just 40 light-years from us, making it easier to study, and it may even have huge amounts of water.
Now that JWST is up and pointing at it, we could learn about the planets' atmospheres, should they have any at all.
Read and see more here: https://www.iflscience.com/jwsts-first ... fe-64591
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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caltrek wrote: Fri Jul 29, 2022 10:44 pm JWST's First Image of TRAPPIST-1 – One of Our Best Candidates for Finding Life
by James Felton
July 26, 2022

Introduction:
(IFL Science) An amateur on Reddit has created the first image of the TRAPPIST-1 system using data from JWST. Exoplanet fans will be excited to hear that JWST – a telescope so powerful it makes Hubble look like someone has smeared their thumb on the lens – has already taken a long first look at the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Using publicly available data from the JWST, Redditor arizonaskies2022 was able to piece together the first image of the star, potentially while one of its planets was transiting it, though this has not yet been confirmed.

"Both images are public raw data files I found and downloaded from MAST website," Arizonaskies2022 explained on the JWST subreddit. "I did minimal processing neither image is cropped just a little stretch and color."

TRAPPIST-1 is exciting to astronomers for a number of reasons, not least because it has seven roughly Earth-sized planets orbiting around it, with three in the habitable zone. The ultra-cool red dwarf is just 40 light-years from us, making it easier to study, and it may even have huge amounts of water.
Now that JWST is up and pointing at it, we could learn about the planets' atmospheres, should they have any at all.
Read and see more here: https://www.iflscience.com/jwsts-first ... fe-64591
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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JWST Took a Direct Hit from a Micrometeorite on One of Its Mirrors
by Matt Williams
July 20, 2022

Introduction:
(Universe Today) A few weeks ago, we reported that JWST had taken a surprisingly large micrometeorite hit on one of its mirror segments. A new image released from NASA shows the extent of the damage. The telescope has been hit six times so far, with 5 of the 6 causing negligible damage to its optics, but the strike in May on the C3 mirror segment caused a “significant uncorrectable change.” After the strike, Webb’s operators could realign the segment to minimize the effect on its image quality.

Luckily, the overall effect was small since only a small portion of the telescope area was affected by it. The mission teams also conducted two realignment steps to correct for the impact, which brought the telescope alignment to a minimum of 59 nm RMS, which is about 5 to 10 nm above the previous best wavefront error RMS values. The authors of the Report also go on to note that “drifts and stability levels” in the telescope typically result in a “telescope contribution” of between 60 (minimum) to 80 nm RMS – at which point, wavefront control is typically performed.

They also explain that it is unknown at this time whether or not the May 2022 impact to segment C3 was rare or something that can be expected to happen frequently throughout JWST’s mission. As they state, this is essential if the JWST mission teams hope to determine if the telescope will be more susceptible to damage by micrometeoroids than pre-launch modeling predicted:
Read more here: https://www.universetoday.com/156793/y ... -mirrors/
Last edited by caltrek on Fri Aug 05, 2022 5:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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Jupiter Glows in New James Webb Space Telescope Raw Image
by Meghan Bartels
July 30, 2022

Introduction:
(Space.com) Jupiter always shines, even when seen sideways in unprocessed data.

Astronomers are busy poring through new data from the James Webb Space Telescope (nicknamed Webb or JWST) in a continuing rush to spot ever-more-distant galaxies. But the observatory is continuing to study plenty of objects closer to home.

Among the targets of those observations is Jupiter. NASA released a handful of early JWST images of the massive planet on July 14, but the telescope has continued to revisit the planet thanks to a program meant to demonstrate JWST's potential to study our own solar system as well as the distant universe.

And that potential is on display in a raw image snapped by the telescope's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument on July 27, 2022, that highlights Jupiter's massive storm, famous the Great Red Spot, as well as bands in the planet's atmosphere.

And the image, along with Webb's other observations, are designed to help scientists(opens in new tab) understand that atmosphere, tackling tasks like characterizing its thermal structure and layers, as well as studying phenomena like winds and auroras.
Read more here: https://www.space.com/james-webb-space ... ter-image
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Webb Telescope Captures Images of Chaotic Cartwheel Galaxy
by Dave Byrnes
August 2, 2022

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — The James Webb Space Telescope has peered back 500 million years to reveal new images of the aptly named Cartwheel Galaxy. The images released Tuesday shed light on the rare circumstance that created the galaxy's striking spoked-wheel shape.

That is, a head-on galactic collision.

"Its appearance, much like that of the wheel of a wagon, is the result of an intense event – a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not visible in this image," NASA said in a press release accompanying the image. "Collisions of galactic proportions cause a cascade of different, smaller events between the galaxies involved; the Cartwheel is no exception."

The Cartwheel Galaxy is located some 500 million light years from Earth, in the Sculptor constellation. It is thought to have once been a typical spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, before the galactic collision disrupted its shape some 940 million years ago. The vast distances between star systems even in a single galaxy means direct collisions between stars or planets in such an event would be rare, but the gravitational shockwaves nevertheless ripped apart Cartwheel's spiral arms and forced them into two concentric rings that continue to expand.

"These two rings expand outwards from the center of the collision, like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it," NASA said.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/webb-te ... l-galaxy/

Image

This James Webb Space Telescope image released by NASA on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022, shows the spoked-wheel shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy in unprecedented detail.
(NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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Wide view of early universe hints at galaxy among earliest ever detected
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-wide-view ... hints.html
by University of Texas at Austin
Two new images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope show what may be among the earliest galaxies ever observed. Both images include objects from more than 13 billion years ago, and one offers a much wider field of view than Webb's First Deep Field image, which was released amid great fanfare July 12. The images represent some of the first out of a major collaboration of astronomers and other academic researchers teaming with NASA and global partners to uncover new insights about the universe.

The team has identified one particularly exciting object—dubbed Maisie's galaxy in honor of project head Steven Finkelstein's daughter—that they estimate is being observed as it was just 290 million years after the Big Bang (astronomers refer to this as a redshift of z=14).

The finding has been published on the preprint server arXiv and is awaiting publication in a peer-reviewed journal. If the finding is confirmed, it would be one of the earliest galaxies ever observed, and its presence would indicate that galaxies started forming much earlier than many astronomers previously thought.
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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Webb telescope captures 'breathtaking' images of Orion Nebula

Image
The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument. Credit: NASA

The wall of dense gas and dust resembles a massive winged creature, its glowing maw lit by a bright star as it soars through cosmic filaments.

An international research team on Monday revealed the first images of the Orion Nebula captured with the James Webb Space Telescope, leaving astronomers "blown away."

The stellar nursery is situated in the constellation Orion, 1,350 light-years away from Earth, in a similar setting in which our own solar system was birthed more than 4.5 billion years ago.
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-webb-tele ... mages.html
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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JWST's First Glimpse of Mars Reveals the Red Planet in a New Light
by Michele Starr
September 20, 2022

Introduction:
(Science Alert) The James Webb Space Telescope has made incredible headway, peering farther across space and time than any telescope that came before. But it's also showing us the Universe closer to home… and now it's turned its gold-plated eye to Earth's next-door-neighbor, Mars.

The resulting images show Mars in a very different light – infrared, in fact – giving us information about the red planet that we wouldn't be able to see with our own naked eyes.

Given that heat lets off infrared light (what we call thermal radiation), a lot of that information is about the temperature of Mars, but there are a few other tidbits that scientists will be able to use to better understand a planet so like, but so very unlike, our own.

It's actually somewhat tricky for JWST to image something close to home. It's the most powerful telescope ever launched into space, designed to be sensitive enough to detect the extraordinarily dim light from the most distant objects in the Universe. Compared to these, Mars blazes like a furnace.

To avoid the oversaturation that would usually result from this brightness, the scientists taking the observations and processing the data had to employ techniques to compensate. The timing of the exposures was incredibly short, and data analysis was adjusted accordingly.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/jwsts-fir ... new-light

Image
To the left, a simulated Mars globe shows the features visible to JWST: at top right, the image at 2.1 microns shows surface features such as craters and dust. At bottom right, the 4.3-micron image shows a heat map of the Mars atmosphere, warmed by the Sun.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Mars JWST/GTO team)
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Re: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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