The James Webb Space Telescope

[berkeman]

IFYPFY. . . .

.

TIL that it's pronounced just like it's spelled... "iffy-piffy".

 

[Filip Larsen]

Webb depicts staggering structure in 19 nearby spiral galaxies

 

[pinball1970]

The Horsehead Nebula image from Webb was in the UK metro this morning.

Located in Orion's Belt 1,375Ly from Earth.

All the images in the link and I have pasted a couple.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/w...nic-horsehead-nebula-in-unprecedented-detail/

A side by side with Hubble and Euclid.

Euclid was launched last July and is also at L2 with Webb and Gaia.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia

 

[DennisN]

There are rumors that 55 Cancri might be one of the first, or even the first, target. It has five known exoplanets, the innermost orbits the star in less than a day.

More recent about 55 Cancri:

Renyu Hu, et. al. "A secondary atmosphere on the rocky Exoplanet 55 Cancrie", 8 May 2024 (Nature)

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Abstract:

Characterizing rocky exoplanets is a central endeavor of astronomy, and yet the search for atmospheres on rocky exoplanets has hitherto resulted in either tight upper limits on the atmospheric mass ^1–3 or inconclusive results ^4–6. The 1.95-R_Earth and 8.8-M_Earth planet 55 Cnc e, with a predominantly rocky composition and an equilibrium temperature of ~2000 K, may have a volatile envelope (containing molecules made from a combination of C, H, O, N, S, and P elements) that accounts for up to a few percent of its radius ^7–13. The planet has been observed extensively with transmission spectroscopy ^14–22, and its thermal emission has been measured in broad photometric bands ^23–26. These observations disfavor a primordial H2/He-dominated atmosphere but cannot conclusively determine whether the planet has a secondary atmosphere^27,28. Here we report a thermal emission spectrum of the planet obtained by JWST’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments from 4 to 12 μm. The measurements rule out the scenario where the planet is a lava world shrouded by a tenuous atmosphere made of vaporized rock^29–32, and indicate a bona fide volatile atmosphere likely rich in CO₂ or CO. This atmosphere can be outgassed from and sustained by a magma ocean.

and indicate a bona fide volatile atmosphere likely rich in CO₂ or CO

So, maybe lots of soda cans opened there, or lots of combustion engines? Or both?
Seriously, I think it's fascinating.

Edit: The planet in question is 55 Cancri e.

Edit 2:

And an article:

Webb discovers evidence of an atmosphere around a rocky super-Earth planet orbiting a Sun-like star
(BBC Sky At Night Magazine, by Iain Todd, May 8, 2024)

 

[pinball1970]

JWST confirms early galaxy, formed 300 million years after the Big bang.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news...xy-discovered-with-james-webb-space-telescope

 

[Filip Larsen]

JWST confirms early galaxy, formed 300 million years after the Big bang.

NASA blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2024/05...ce-telescope-finds-most-distant-known-galaxy/

 

[Astronuc]

NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins​

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-long-studied-star-is-actually-twins/

Scientists recently got a big surprise from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when they turned the observatory toward a group of young stars called WL 20. The region has been studied since the 1970s with at least five telescopes, but it took Webb’s unprecedented resolution and specialized instruments to reveal that what researchers long thought was one of the stars, WL 20S, is actually a pair that formed about 2 million to 4 million years ago.

The discovery was made using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and was presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on June 12. MIRI also found that the twins have matching jets of gas streaming into space from their north and south poles.

The team got another surprise when additional observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a group of more than 60 radio antennas in Chile, revealed that disks of dust and gas encircle both stars. Based on the stars’ age, it’s possible that planets are forming in those disks.

The combined results indicate that the twin stars are nearing the end of this early period of their lives, which means scientists will have the opportunity to learn more about how the stars transition from youth into adulthood.

 

[pinball1970]

A lensed quasar captured by Webb. RX J1131-1231

Z= 0.658, approx 6 Gly from earth.

From https://esawebb.org/images/potm2406a/

“A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot.”

From Wiki

“About a million quasars have been identified with reliable spectroscopic redshifts,[6] and between 2-3 million identified in photometric catalogs.[7][8] The nearest known quasar is about 600 million light-years from Earth. The record for the most distant known quasar continues to change. In 2017, quasar ULAS J1342+0928 was detected at redshift z = 7.54. Light observed from this 800-million-solar-mass quasar was emitted when the universe was only 690 million years old.[9][10][11] In 2020, quasar Pōniuāʻena was detected from a time only 700 million years after the Big Bang, and with an estimated mass of 1.5 billion times the mass of the Sun.[12][13] In early 2021, the quasar QSO J0313–1806, with a 1.6-billion-solar-mass black hole, was reported at z = 7.64, 670 million years after the Big Bang.[14]”

 

[pinball1970]

Happy birthday JWST.