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.

 

[pinball1970]

June 20, 2024, image Serpens nebula, aligned protostar outflows (top left) jets of gas from newborn stars that all slant in the same direction.

More details here
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/...BDWFXD7RP49S8P0B3CF?amp;news=true&user=bjames

 

[pinball1970]

Article today https://phys.org/news/2024-09-webb-reveals-distorted-galaxy-cosmic.html

Previously images using Chandra, VLT and HST
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/483/3/3082/5234233

 

[pinball1970]

Physics.org info with respect to this image here.

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-webb-lensed-supernova-hubble-tension.html

 

[pinball1970]

The smaller spiral on the left, catalogued as IC 2163, is moving behind NGC 2207, the spiral galaxy on the right.

 

[pinball1970]

Sombrero galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

From phys.org this week.

"General Observer time with Webb is more competitive than ever. A record-breaking 2,377 proposals were submitted by the 15 October 2024 deadline, requesting about 78,000 hours of observation time. This is an oversubscription rate—the ratio defining the observation hours requested versus the actual time available in one year of Webb's operations—of around 9 to 1."

 

[AlexB23]

Sombrero galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

View attachment 353917

From phys.org this week.

"General Observer time with Webb is more competitive than ever. A record-breaking 2,377 proposals were submitted by the 15 October 2024 deadline, requesting about 78,000 hours of observation time. This is an oversubscription rate—the ratio defining the observation hours requested versus the actual time available in one year of Webb's operations—of around 9 to 1."

Wow, this is awesome. Folks are wanting to use Webb more than there is time in a year. Hopefully, this means the telescope can be used for a few decades just as Hubble is almost 35 years old.

 

[phinds]

Wow, this is awesome. Folks are wanting to use Webb more than there is time in a year. Hopefully, this means the telescope can be used for a few decades just as Hubble is almost 35 years old.

Your logic escapes me. The fact that it is oversubscribed (and will likely remain so for decades, if we are lucky enough to have it last that long) has no bearing on its longevity.

 

[Frabjous]

Your logic escapes me. The fact that it is oversubscribed (and will likely remain so for decades, if we are lucky enough to have it last that long) has no bearing on its longevity.

It increases the probability of repair missions.

 

[AlexB23]

Your logic escapes me. The fact that it is oversubscribed (and will likely remain so for decades, if we are lucky enough to have it last that long) has no bearing on its longevity.

Yeah, but the government may fund the telescope for longer if it remains so popular.

 

[Arjan82]

It increases the probability of repair missions.

Aren't repair missions out of the question with regards to its location?

 

[pinball1970]

Aren't repair missions out of the question with regards to its location?

Depends what you mean by repair, they can do things remotely, I would check out the work arounds they did remotely to Voyager 2. More primitive kit and further away (a lot)

 

[Frabjous]

Aren't repair missions out of the question with regards to its location?

Manned missions are out. There has been mention of an unmanned refueling mission (which would be difficult and is not currently planned)

 

[Filip Larsen]

Latest James Webb data hints at new physics in Universe’s expansion​

This latest study serves as a critical cross-check to the April paper, using three different measurements to determine distances to galaxies known to be hosts to supernovae. "Cross-checking Hubble might sound prosaic, but the Hubble results demonstrate a profound tension in the Universe between how fast it is expanding now (measured by Hubble) versus the prediction from the standard model, LambdaCDM (calibrated by the Cosmic Microwave Background)," lead author Adam Riess, of the Space Science Telescope Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. "So Webb confirming Hubble means we are really seeing something amiss in the Universe."

(And still a nice image, even if this JWST news is not as such about beautiful image details)

 

[pinball1970]

Latest James Webb data hints at new physics in Universe’s expansion​

View attachment 354324
(And still a nice image, even if this JWST news is not as such about beautiful image details)

the paper

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad8c21

 

[mfb]

Yeah, but the government may fund the telescope for longer if it remains so popular.

It will get funding as long as the telescope can take data. Essentially every spacecraft does, because operating them is much cheaper than building them.

 

[pinball1970]

Yeah, but the government may fund the telescope for longer if it remains so popular.

The original mission was about 5-10 years but....

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was designed for a mission of at least five years, with a goal of 10 years. However, after the successful launch and commissioning of the telescope, the Webb team determined that the observatory should have enough propellant to support science operations in orbit for more than 20 years.

EDIT: "An L2 orbit is unstable, so JWST needs to use propellant to maintain its halo orbit around L2 (known as station-keeping) to prevent the telescope from drifting away from its orbital position.[189] It was designed to carry enough propellant for 10 years,[190] but the precision of the Ariane 5 launch and the first midcourse correction were credited with saving enough onboard fuel that JWST may be able to maintain its orbit for around 20 years instead.[191][192][193] Space.com called the launch "flawless".[194]"

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

which referenced.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12...l-likely-to-extend-its-lifetime-expectations/

 

[collinsmark]

It will get funding as long as the telescope can take data. Essentially every spacecraft does, because operating them is much cheaper than building them.

Well, let's hope that remains the case. Chandra X-ray telescope had a pretty close call of being decommissioned due to funding, even though it was quite operational.

"Scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief last week when NASA announced that the Chandra X-ray Observatory had been spared the chopping block — at least for another year. It was an abrupt about-face from plans announced in March to decommission the space-based telescope by this December.​

​

"Much of the credit for the 11th-hour stay of execution goes to a grassroots movement that dramatically demonstrated how public opinion can impact science funding. After receiving word last spring that Chandra was slated for termination, scientists and the public erupted in protest. Organized in part under the banner and hashtag of #SaveChandra, letters, petitions, and phone calls poured into Congress."​

​

Source: https://www.astronomy.com/science/c...acing-chopping-block-gets-reprieve-from-nasa/

 

[AlexB23]

It will get funding as long as the telescope can take data. Essentially every spacecraft does, because operating them is much cheaper than building them.

Agreed. No wonder why Voyager 1 and 2 are both running in 2024. :) I hope those probes run until 2030.

 

[AlexB23]

The original mission was about 5-10 years but....

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was designed for a mission of at least five years, with a goal of 10 years. However, after the successful launch and commissioning of the telescope, the Webb team determined that the observatory should have enough propellant to support science operations in orbit for more than 20 years.

EDIT: "An L2 orbit is unstable, so JWST needs to use propellant to maintain its halo orbit around L2 (known as station-keeping) to prevent the telescope from drifting away from its orbital position.[189] It was designed to carry enough propellant for 10 years,[190] but the precision of the Ariane 5 launch and the first midcourse correction were credited with saving enough onboard fuel that JWST may be able to maintain its orbit for around 20 years instead.[191][192][193] Space.com called the launch "flawless".[194]"

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

which referenced.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12...l-likely-to-extend-its-lifetime-expectations/

I am glad that the JWST has the capability of running for 20 years. That means the telescope could last well until the 2030s, or even 2041.

 

[pinball1970]

From Wiki “NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster of stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.

Radiation and shock waves from the stars of NGC 602 have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust that is N90,

this in turn has triggered new star formation in the ridges”

There some Chandra images https://phys.org/news/2024-12-nasa-missions-cosmic-wreath-displaying.html

This one from Webb.