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On anniversary of NASA’s Webb telescope reaching destination, here are the most striking images so far
Tuesday marks one year since the James Webb Space Telescope reached its destination, orbiting 1 million miles away from Earth.
The Webb telescope, which was launched on Christmas Day in 2021, was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency with the goal of studying the formation of the universe’s earliest galaxies, how they compare to today’s galaxies, how our solar system developed and if there is life on other planets.
It uses infrared radiation to detect objects in space and can view celestial bodies that are generally invisible to the naked eye.
Since then, the Webb telescope has sent back plenty of images, including of stars, planets and nebula and even galaxies millions of miles away.
Here are some of the most striking images taken over the course of a year:
Engineers and technicians assemble the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Nov. 2, 2016, in Greenbelt, Md.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Distant galaxies
The first full-color image taken by the Webb Telescope was unveiled during a press event on July 11 at the White House hosted by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is the “deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date,” according to NASA.
In the first James Webb Space Telescope image to be released July 11, 2022, the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe was taken in less than one day. Similar images from the Hubble Telescope have taken multiple weeks to produce. The background of space is black as thousands of galaxies appear with their shapes and colors varying. These galaxies are part of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and are warping the appearances of galaxies seen around them.
Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA
Thousands of galaxies can be seen in the image but, according to NASA, it covers the size of the equivalent of someone holding a grain of sand at an arm’s length distance.
It was also the first time the public understood how much more powerful Webb is than its predecessor, the Hubble Telescope, which only sees visible light, ultraviolet radiation and near-infrared radiation.
Cosmic Cliffs
The image, revealed July 12 during an event held by NASA, showed new details about the Carina Nebula, located in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Just the edge of the nebula can be seen, but the image shows hundreds of stars that were previously masked by a cloud of gas and dust.
Behind the curtain of dust and gas in these Cosmic Cliffs are previously hidden baby stars, uncovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in an image released July 12, 2022.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The area, referred to as the Cosmic Cliffs, shows a “giant, gaseous cavity” as young stars that were recently born push down ultraviolet radiation and create the jagged-looking edge.
The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks and valleys — an appearance very similar to a mountain range.
Jupiter in detail
On Aug. 22, NASA revealed two new images of Jupiter taken by Webb, which show the planet’s atmosphere, rings and moons in never-before-seen detail.
The first image is a composite showing swirls of different colors, indicating Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, and the infamous Great Red Spot, which can produce winds of more than 250 miles per hour.
The second image shows Jupiter’s rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet — according to NASA — and two of its moons, Adrastea and Amalthea.
An image of Jupiter, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, released Aug. 22, 2022, comes from the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. In this wide-field view, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.
Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA
Phantom galaxy
First released Aug. 30 by the ESA, Webb captured an image of the Phantom Galaxy, which is located about 32 million light-years away from Earth.
Also known as M74, the Phantom Galaxy has low surface brightness, making it hard to see and requiring clear, dark skies to do so. However, Webb’s sharp lens has captured the clearest image of the galaxy’s features.
“These spiral arms are traced by blue and bursts of pink, which are star-forming regions,” NASA wrote in a social media post. “A speckled cluster of young stars glow blue at the very heart of the galaxy.”
This image from the James Webb Space Telescope, released Aug. 31, 2022, shows the heart of M74, otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy. The telescope has revealed gray filaments forming a spiral pattern winding outward from the center of the galaxy. These spiral arms of the galaxy are traced by blue and pink and represent regions in which stars are forming. The very heart of the galaxy is colored blue and has speckles, which are young stars that are forming around the nucleus of the galaxy.
Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA
Pillars of creation
NASA released an image of “The Pillars of Creation” — young, bright-red stars within a billowing cloud of gas and dust — on Oct. 19
The Pillars of Creation are elephant trunks, a type of interstellar matter formation, located in the Eagle Nebula, which is about 6,500 to 7,000 light-years away from Earth, according to the space agency.
The “Pillars of Creation” has layers of semi-opaque rusty red gas and dust that start at the bottom left and go toward the top right in this image from the James Webb Space Telescope, released Oct. 19, 2022. The Pillars of Creation, first captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, were photographed by the Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, which is invisible to human eyes. Seeing in infrared allows Webb to pierce through the dust and reveal many stars. Webb’s image identifies more precise counts of newborn stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust.
Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA
Fiery hourglass
Released Nov. 16, the Webb Telescope reveals a protostar, which is the early stages of a star being born.
The cloud of gas in red and orange contorts into the shape of a fiery hourglass.
As it draws material in, its core will compress, get hotter and eventually begin nuclear fusion, creating a star.
The James Webb Space Telescope catches a fiery hourglass as a new star forms in an image released, Nov. 16, 2022. Hidden in the neck of this “hourglass” of light are the very beginnings of a new star, known as a protostar. This protostar is a hot, puffy clump of gas that is only a fraction of the mass of the Sun. As it draws material in, its core will compress, get hotter and eventually begin nuclear fusion, creating a star.
Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA
Coldest ice ever measured
The last image released by NASA ahead of the one-year anniversary shows a molecular cloud, which is where stars and planets are born, with icy ingredients.
The telescope shows the frozen form of elements, including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.
This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) features the central region of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud, which resides 630 light years away.
Space Telescope Science Institut/NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. McClure
“We’re not talking ice cubes,” NASA wrote in a social media post on Jan. 23. “This molecular cloud is so cold and dark that various molecules have frozen onto grains of dust inside. Webb’s data proves for the first time that molecules more complex than methanol can form in the icy depths of such clouds before stars are born.”
ABC News’ Max Zahn contributed to this report.
Samsung Galaxy A24 images reveal Galaxy S23-like design
The launch of the Galaxy S23 series is something millions of folks have been waiting for, even though the leaks have pretty much made Samsung’s Unpacked event null and void as everyone already knows what to expect from the new phones.
Of course, that isn’t to say everyone is going to buy a Galaxy S23-series smartphone. The Galaxy A series continues to be popular and will no doubt sell a lot more in 2023 as well. And one of the upcoming A series devices that could end up being a massive success, the Galaxy A24, has been revealed ahead of its official announcement in all its glory thanks to leaked 360-renders.
These renders show the device from the sides, back, and front, and the first thing you will probably notice (at least if you follow the mobile industry and all the leaks that have been happening) is that the A24 looks quite similar to a Galaxy S23 or Galaxy S23+ from the back. Part of it is down to those individual rear camera rings, which is a design theme that Samsung seems to have adopted for all devices this year.
The front, however, will probably give away the fact that it’s a mid-range phone we’re looking at, because of the waterdrop notch and the huge chin at the bottom. The latter is something we hope Samsung would have addressed already, but clearly, it don’t done so.
The specs might not be too impressive, either. The Galaxy A24 is reportedly powered by the MediaTek Helio G99 chip, which is the first time that Samsung is using that chip on a phone if memory serves us right. Other specs are expected to be run-off-the-mill, too, such as a 6.4″ AMOLED display, at least 4 gigs of RAM, and Android 13 out-of-the-box.
The rear cameas are said to include a 50MP main camera, a 5MP ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP macro camera, while the 8MP camera for taking selfies and making video calls should see an upgrade to a 13MP camera. As far as battery capactity is concerned, it could either be 4,000 mAh or 5,000 mAh, though we have a feeling it will be the latter. In either case, charging should be quick as the A24 is said to support 25W charging, same as its last two predecessors.
There is no concrete time frame for when the Galaxy A24 will go official, though it shouldn’t be too far off. In any case, rest assured we will keep you updated as more news about the phone comes our way.
South Korea’s moon probe captures stunning Earth, moon images
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South Korea’s first lunar probe has returned some striking images of Earth and the moon.
The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter began orbiting the moon in December after the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s spacecraft had launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August.
The probe, also known as “Danuri” thanks to a public naming contest in the country that combined the Korean words for moon and enjoy, will orbit the moon for 11 months.
The stunning images captured by the probe showcasing Earth and the moon in black and white look like something photographer Ansel Adams might have taken had he ever enjoyed such an opportunity. The orbiter is flying at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface.
Data collected by the orbiter will be used to inform future lunar exploration, including the Artemis program, which eventually aims to land humans at the lunar south pole in late 2024.
The probe’s imagery could help with selecting landing sites for future Artemis missions, as well as mapping resources like water.
South Korea signed the Artemis Accords in 2021 and collaborates with NASA on lunar exploration.
The probe carries six instruments, including the NASA-funded ShadowCam, developed by Arizona State University.
Universities and research institutes in South Korea developed the probe’s high-resolution camera to scout future landing sites, a polarized camera to analyze surface particles, an instrument to measure the lunar magnetic field and a gamma-ray spectrometer to identify elements in the lunar surface.
ShadowCam’s main objective is to take images of the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles that will help researchers searching for ice, mapping terrain and watching for seasonal changes.
ShadowCam is several hundred times more sensitive than the cameras on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, enabling it to take detailed images in incredibly low-light conditions.
The probe recently used ShadowCam to peer inside Shackleton crater, one of the permanently shadowed regions on the lunar surface.
Previous images taken of this crater by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were able to spot its illuminated rim, but ShadowCam could actually see the interior, including the crater floor and boulder tracks that rocks left behind after tumbling inside.
Officials at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, or KARI, sees the Danuri orbiter as a “first step for ensuring and verifying its capability of space exploration,” according to the organization.
The US, Russia, Japan, China, European Union and India have all sent missions to the moon, and South Korea wants to dive into space exploration and develop its own missions.
“Korea is planning to successfully land onto the surface of the Moon or asteroids and make safe return,” according to the institute. “Korea is expecting to achieve strategic space technologies.”
In addition to the orbiter, KARI aims to make an initial lunar landing on the moon by 2030.
Stunning Images Reveal The Most Detailed Look at The Milky Way in Radio Waves : ScienceAlert
Two major astronomy research programs, called EMU and PEGASUS, have joined forces to resolve one of the mysteries of our Milky Way: where are all the supernova remnants?
A supernova remnant is an expanding cloud of gas and dust marking the last phase in the life of a star, after it has exploded as a supernova. But the number of supernova remnants we have detected so far with radio telescopes is too low.
Models predict five times as many, so where are the missing ones?
We have combined observations from two of Australia’s world-leading radio telescopes, the ASKAP radio telescope and the Parkes radio telescope, Murriyang, to answer this question.
The gas between the stars
The new image reveals thin tendrils and clumpy clouds associated with hydrogen gas filling the space between the stars.
We can see sites where new stars are forming, as well as supernova remnants. In just this small patch, only about one percent of the whole Milky Way, we have discovered more than 20 new possible supernova remnants where only seven were previously known.
These discoveries were led by PhD student Brianna Ball from Canada’s University of Alberta, working with her supervisor, Roland Kothes of the National Research Council of Canada, who prepared the image.
These new discoveries suggest we are close to accounting for the missing remnants.
So why can we see them now when we couldn’t before?
The power of joining forces
I lead the Evolutionary Map of the Universe or EMU program, an ambitious project with ASKAP to make the best radio atlas of the Southern Hemisphere.
EMU will measure about 40 million new distant galaxies and supermassive black holes, to help us understand how galaxies have changed over the history of the universe.
Early EMU data have already led to the discovery of odd radio circles (or “ORCs”), and revealed rare oddities like the “Dancing Ghosts”.
For any telescope, the resolution of its images depends on the size of its aperture. Interferometers like ASKAP simulate the aperture of a much larger telescope. With 36 relatively small dishes (each 12 meter, 40 foot in diameter) but a 6 kilometer (4 mile) distance connecting the farthest of these, ASKAP mimics a single telescope with a 6 kilometer wide dish.
That gives ASKAP a good resolution, but comes at the expense of missing radio emission on the largest scales. In the comparison above, the ASKAP image alone appears too skeletal.
To recover that missing information, we turned to a companion project called PEGASUS, led by Ettore Caretti of Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics.
PEGASUS uses the 64 meter diameter Parkes/Murriyang telescope – one of the largest single-dish radio telescopes in the world – to map the sky.
Even with such a large dish, Parkes has rather limited resolution. By combining the information from both Parkes and ASKAP, each fills in the gaps of the other to give us the best fidelity image of this region of our Milky Way galaxy.
This combination reveals the radio emission on all scales to help uncover the missing supernova remnants.
Linking the datasets from EMU and PEGASUS will allow us to reveal more hidden gems. In the next few years we will have an unprecedented view of almost the entire Milky Way, about a hundred times larger than this initial image, but with the same level of detail and sensitivity.
We estimate there may be up to 1,500 or more new supernova remnants yet to discover. Solving the puzzle of these missing remnants will open new windows into the history of our Milky Way.
ASKAP and Parkes are owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, as part of the Australia Telescope National Facility. CSIRO acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the Traditional Owners and native title holders of Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, where ASKAP is located, and the Wiradjuri people as the traditional owners of the Parkes Observatory.
Andrew Hopkins, Professor of Astronomy, Macquarie University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
NASA James Webb Space Telescope’s most spectacular images
Since launching on Christmas Day 2021, NASA’s $10 billion (£7.4 billion) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has beamed back astonishing images of the cosmos with unprecedented detail.
Webb was launched with the aim of looking back in time to the dawn of the universe so it can capture what happened a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang.
It will spend more than a decade at an area of balanced gravity between the sun and Earth called L2 exploring the universe in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to gaze through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born.
Here are some of the best images so far, including a snap of the ‘Pillars of Creation’, Neptune’s rings, a ‘cartwheel galaxy’ and a ‘cosmic dance’ between five galaxies.
Here are the best images so far, including a new shot of the ‘Pillars of Creation’, Neptune’s rings, a ‘cartwheel galaxy’ and a ‘cosmic dance’ between five galaxies
NGC 346 STAR CLUSTER
JWST released a new image this week, providing new insights into how stars formed in the early universe more than 10 billion years ago.
The image shows a young cluster of stars NGC 346, which is more than 200,000 light-years from Earth.
Located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) – a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way – NGC 346 is interesting to astronomers because it resembles the conditions of the early Universe when star formation was at its peak.
Astronomers believe studying this region could help shed light on how the first stars formed during the ‘cosmic noon’, which is only two or three billion years after the Big Bang.
NASA ‘s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released a new image this wek, providing new insights into how stars formed in the early universe more than 10 billion years ago.
SOUTHERN RING NEBULA
In July, NASA released the first four images captured by JWST, including the Southern Ring nebula, a planetary nebula – an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives.
According to NASA, the Southern Ring nebula is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located about 2,000 light years away from Earth.
The dimmer star at the centre of the image has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, giving it the appearance of a bright glint on a precious sapphire.
The dying star is cloaked in dust as it undertakes its ‘final performance’, as NASA put it – something that our sun will go through in billions of years.
Southern Ring Nebula is shown almost face-on, but if it were to be rotated to view it edge-on, its three-dimensional shape would more clearly look like two bowls placed together at the bottom, opening away from one another with a large hole at the centre.
There are two images of the Southern Ring nebula, captured by two different instruments on James Webb –Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), which sees light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The stars – and their layers of light – are prominent in the image from NIRCam, while the image from MIRI shows for the first time the nebula’s second star.
NASA said the brighter star influences the nebula’s appearance, and as the pair orbit one another, they ‘stir the pot’ of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns.
These two images also reveal a cache of distant galaxies – not stars – in the background, appearing as a variety of multi-colored points of light seen here are galaxies.
Eagle-eyed views will also notice a blueish line to the left, which NASA astronomer Karl Gordon had said he originally thought it was part of the nebula.
However, he later realised it was a galaxy captured edge-on. Such a perspective could reveal more about how stars are distributed throughout a galaxy.
Two cameras aboard Webb captured the latest image of this planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 3132, and known informally as the Southern Ring Nebula. It is approximately 2,500 light-years away. One image was taken in the near-infrared (NIRCam, left) and another in the mid-infrared (MIRI, right)
SMACS 0723
Another image from the first batch released in July shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe that are held together by their own gravity.
They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, lots of hot plasma, and a large amount of dark matter – invisible mass that only interacts with regular matter through gravity and doesn’t emit, absorb or reflect light.
This image of SMACS 0723 covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe.
According to NASA, SMACS 0723 has a gravitational pull so powerful that it warps both space-time and the path that light subsequently travels through it.
Because of this, bright white galaxies are warping and stretching the light from the more distant galaxies, making them seem elongated, almost banana-shaped.
The combined mass of SMACS 0723 operates as a gravitational lens and, according to NASA, ‘magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations’.
Galaxy clusters, like SMACS 0723, are the largest objects in the universe that are held together by their own gravity. Here is the original image, released by NASA
NASA said Webb’s NIRCam, which captures light from the edge of the visible through the near infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus in the new image.
Tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters – groups of hundreds to millions of stars that share a common origin, all gravitationally bound for as long as several billions of years.
STEPHAN’S QUINTET
Next up is Stephan’s Quintet, a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877.
It’s fair to say Mr Stephan would be blown away by the new James Webb image of his discovery, which captures the five galaxies in ‘exquisite detail’, NASA says.
Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a ‘cosmic dance’ of repeated close encounters.
‘Dust lanes crossing between galaxies and long filaments of stars and gas extending far beyond the central regions all suggest galaxies twisted by violent encounters,’ the European Space Agency says.
‘The galaxies float through space, distorted shapes moulded by tidal interactions, weaving together in the intricate figures of an immense cosmic dance, choreographed by gravity.’
Two of the five galaxies, NGC 7318 a and b, forms a pair, and almost appear as one in the new image.
The brightest member of the five is spiral galaxy NGC 7320, to the left of the picture, which is closer than the others.
Stephan’s Quintet is a group of five galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, first discovered by French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877
NGC 7320 has extensive ‘H II region’ – regions of ionized hydrogen atoms, depicted as red blobs, where star formation is occurring.
NASA said the image is an enormous mosaic, covering about one-fifth of the moon’s diameter. It contains more than 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files.
Stephan’s Quintet is famous for appearing as angelic figures at the beginning of the much-loved 1946 Christmas film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.
CARINA NEBULA
The Carina Nebula is one of the brightest and biggest nebulae in space, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation called Carina.
Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars are birthed and this particular one is home to many gigantic stars, including some larger than the sun.
At the bottom of the image is the western section of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ – an orangey-brown landscape of ‘craggy mountains’ and ‘valleys’ speckled with glittering baby stars. NASA experts don’t even know what some of the structures are in this image, because they are so unprecedented
The stunning shot shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.
At the bottom of the image is the western section of NGC 3324, and what NASA calls the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ – an orangey-brown landscape of ‘craggy mountains’ and ‘valleys’ speckled with glittering baby stars.
The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. The tallest ‘peaks’ in this image are about seven light-years high.
NASA says: ‘Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The ‘steam’ that appears to rise from the celestial ‘mountains’ is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.’
Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
‘Today, for the first time, we’re seeing brand new stars that were completely hidden from our view,’ said Amber Straughn, deputy project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
‘We see examples of bubbles and cavities and jets that are being blown out by these newborn stars. We even see some galaxies sort of lurking in the background up here.
‘We see examples of structures that honesty we don’t even know what they are.’
PILLARS OF CREATION
Webb also revealed a fresh look at the spectacular ‘Pillars of Creation’, the trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula.
These were previously snapped in 1995 by Hubble, JWST’s predecessor, but the new image provides an incredible level of detail never before seen.
It shows finger-like tendrils of gas and dust, glowing edges of dust where young stars are beginning to form, and newly-formed stars in orange outside the pillars.
Beautiful: Almost 30 years ago the Pillars of Creation stunned the astronomy world when they were captured by NASA’s famed Hubble Space Telescope. Now a new generation can enjoy a fresh view of the haunting scene after the US space agency’s $10 billion (£7.4 billion) super space telescope James Webb imaged the same finger-like tendrils of gas and dust (pictured)
The first image of the Pillars of Creation was taken by Hubble in 1995. It provided the first evidence that stars could be birthed within the pillars
The latest image was taken in mid-infrared light, which blocks out the brightness of stars so it only captures the flowing gas and dust. This provided a new way of experiencing and understanding the stunning formation.
TARANTULA NEBULA
Another JWST image released by NASA in September shows thousands of young stars in a spider-shaped stellar nursery known as the Tarantula Nebula.
The cosmic nursery, officially called 30 Doradus, is located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Megallanic Cloud galaxy, which happens to be the biggest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group — the galaxies closest to our Milky Way.
NASA said the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region near our galaxy, and home to the hottest, most massive stars known.
In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust
Viewed with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk.
The nebula’s cavity centered in the NIRCam image appears to be hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image.
EXOPLANET HIP 65426
JWST also captured its first image of an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system.
Exoplanet HIP 65426 is located just 385 light years from Earth, and is just 15 to 20 million years old, which is much younger compared with our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.
The telescope used NIRCam and MIRI that can block out surrounding starlight to snap epic images of the exoplanet.
NASA’s James Webb Telescope captured detailed images of its first exoplanet that sits outside of our solar system. The telescope used its powerful technologies to ‘see’ the exoplanets longer wavelengths that are missed by Earth-based telescopes
The alien world was first discovered in 2017 by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, in Chile, but the long wavelengths were blocked by Earth’s atmosphere.
However, since Webb is soaring through space, it was able to take direct shots of the planet that astronomers can process to remove the starlight and uncover the planet.
NASA said it is a gas giant that is without a rocky surface and therefore could not host life.
NORTH ECLIPTIC POLE GALAXIES
Another image released earlier this month shows an early universe with faint, distant lights beaming from newly formed galaxies in an area known as the North Ecliptic Pole.
The thousands of never-before-seen galaxies formed 13.5 billion years ago — around 200 million years after the Big Bang.
Cosmic objects seen in the image are one billion times fainter than what can be seen by the unaided eye, but the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captured the spectra of light coming from objects in the image.
The North Ecliptic Pole is located in the constellation Draco, one of the largest in the sky, which sits in the northern celestial hemisphere.
It is one of the ancient Greek constellations and was first cataloged by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century.
This image from NASA’s telescope captures thousands of never-before-seen galaxies that formed 13.5 billion years ago – 200 million years after the big bang
CARTWHEEL GALAXY
JWST has snapped other images of spiral galaxies, with one that reveals the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy that is 489.2 million light-years from Earth.
Much like a wagon wheel, its appearance results from an extreme event — a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not visible in this image.
Other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, have previously examined the Cartwheel.
But the dramatic galaxy has been shrouded in mystery — perhaps literally, given the amount of dust that obscures the view.
The Cartwheel Galaxy sports two rings — a bright inner ring and a surrounding, colorful ring. These rings expand outwards from the centre of the collision, like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it.
Fireworks: The James Webb Space Telescope is once again wowing with its view of the universe. It has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy (pictured), revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole
NEPTUNE’S RINGS
JWST captured the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years, since the Voyager 2 probe flew past the distant planet in 1989.
In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows the planet’s fainter dust bands.
Beyond the planet itself are seven of the giant’s 14 moons, the most significant of which is Triton. This appears almost star-like because Neptune is darkened in Webb’s view by methane absorption at infrared wavelengths.
Triton, however, reflects an average of 70 per cent of the sunlight that strikes its icy surface so it shows up extremely bright.
Mesmerising: The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years
NASA has anticipated that JWST, which is now orbiting the sun at a million miles (1.6 million kilometres) from Earth, should last 20 years.
‘The instruments are more efficient, the optics are sharper and more stable. We have more fuel and we use less fuel,’ said Massimo Stiavelli, head of the Webb mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore.
The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work in tandem for a while.
The JWST project, which started in 1996, is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies.
James Webb Space Telescope began development in 1996 and was originally envisaged to launch in 2007, but a major redesign in 2005 put this back.
Construction was finally completed in 2016 and an extensive period of testing work began, but this was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Launch had been scheduled for March 2021 before being delayed to October, and then again until December.
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope snaps a STUNNING photo of a young cluster of stars 200,000 light-years away
NASA’s James Webb discovers its first PLANET just 41 light-years away – and it is a similar size to Earth
Sonic boom several times larger than our Milky Way that was released when a galaxy cut through Stephen’s Quintet at 1.8 million mph is captured by NASA’s James Webb Telescope
The James Webb Telescope: NASA’s $10 billion telescope is designed to detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies
The James Webb telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
It is the world’s biggest and most powerful orbital space telescope, capable of peering back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.
The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work in tandem for a while.
The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
It circles the Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.
More Scientific Images Should Go This Hard
I read a lot of press releases about new scientific papers for my job. Sometimes the art that accompanies them is funny, such as this unapologetically fuchsia rendering of the microscopic creature Saccorhytus. Sometimes they are evocative of a past world, such as this reconstruction of a 100-million-year-old crab. Sometimes these images are ambitious infographics or unsettling acts of Photoshop. Ostensibly, the purpose of these images is the same—to invite people to click on a story about something new we have discovered about the world.
On Thursday, scrolling through press releases, I saw an image that stopped me in my tracks. On one level, it was a photograph of a Nile crocodile rising from the water with half of an ungulate known as an impala dangling from its teeth. But it was also an artistic collage of rendered molecules, charts, and three neon lines streaked through the water where the crocodile had just made its kill. These visual details were so striking that, in my first viewing of the image, I nearly missed the half-swallowed impala, its delicate carcass one part of an image that contained multitudes. It was as if the crocodile had teleported to the 1990s to hunt amid the famous teal carpet of the Portland International Airport. Sure, I wanted to click. But the image also did what great art is supposed to do: It made me think. I wanted it on a t-shirt.
I saw the image on a site called Phys.org, which aggregates science and technology news. It accompanied a press release, “Study clarifies mystery of crocodilian hemoglobin,” which spotlighted the results of a new study in the journal Current Biology published by a group of scientists including Jay F. Storz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The press release was written by Scott Schrage, a science writer at the university. But who had created the image? When I found the image on the University of Nebraska’s newsroom—Nebraska Today—I saw the image credit: “Shutterstock / Current Biology / Scott Schrage | University Communication and Marketing.” Scott Schrage! Writer and artist. I needed to talk to him.
Schrage, who has been writing about the university’s research for about seven years, is responsible not just writing about the scientific papers that come out of the university, but also for finding images to accompany them. Sometimes this secondary task is easy, a matter of sending Storz and a colleague to pose with penguins at the Omaha Zoo to promote a new paper on the evolution of penguin hemoglobin. (Storz is really into hemoglobin. His team made headlines for capturing the highest-dwelling mammal, the yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse, which lives at heights above 22,000 feet, where there is just about 44 percent of the oxygen available at sea level.) But there won’t always be a penguin or yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse nearby for a photoshoot, meaning Schrage has had to innovate.
“As you’re wading through these giant seas of text in like a 15- or 20-page paper, there are these beautiful little islands of visual engagement,” Schrage told me, referring to the charts or renderings often included in a paper. “They’re sort of delving into some technicalities that are beyond the scope of the story that I’m planning to write, but they’re just so, you know, pretty,” he said. So Schrage began experimenting, creating images that combined a paper’s visual components along with stock photography.
Storz told Schrage he had always been interested in footage of crocodiles found in nature documentaries: seeing the big reptiles lurk below the surface, thrash out of the water, and drag their prey underwater to drown them. This style of hunting meant the reptiles would have to hold their breath for an extraordinary amount of time, even more than an hour. Crocodiles can do this because they evolved a specialized way of regulating their hemoglobin, a “slow-release mechanism that allows crocodilians to efficiently exploit their onboard oxygen stores,” Storz told Schrage for the press release. (To learn more about the new research, you should definitely read Schrage’s story, which is much more thorough and nuanced than this one.)
Schrage began looking for stock photos of crocodiles ambushing their prey in the water. “This particular image I just thought was incredibly captivating,” he said. “It’s obviously like, deadly serious. But it’s also kind of cartoonish.” The dangling legs of the impala reminded him of Tom and Jerry cartoons, how a tail dangling from Tom’s mouth might have been the only hint that Jerry was in trouble.
The stripes came next. “I felt like I needed something to frame the croc,” Schrage said, adding that he arranged the stripes to be reminiscent of an evolutionary tree. He turned to a color palette of the ’90s. The teal stripe came first—reminiscent of the colors of the Charlotte Hornets, he noted—and then an orange creamsicle, and then a fuchsia stripe at the bottom. Schrage often tries to include the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s customary red in images, but he worried, in the context of a watery hunt, blood red might be too on the nose. Besides, a crocodile’s hunt isn’t necessarily a bloodbath. “It’s drowning, it’s doing its death roll in its prey,” Schrage said. “More or less, especially with prey like an impala, it’s just swallowing it.”
Schrage overlaid the image with figures from the study: some charts and renderings of resurrected hemoglobin from the ancient ancestors of crocodiles. He also included an actual phylogenetic tree from the paper in the bottom-left corner. “As I was looking at these, I was thinking, OK, these kind of look like childlike, really rudimentary representations of crocodile teeth,” Schrage said. “So I was like, OK, let’s include that element as well.”
All combined, these elements make for a thoroughly unforgettable scientific image. When I asked Schrage if he considered himself a maximalist, he demurred. Institutional writing often comes with guidelines, many editors, and many eyes that want a say in what’s published. “But when I pull together an image like this, I let my flag fly a little bit,” he said. “When it comes to this, I do have more freedom.”
Schrage said he feels lucky to cover this kind of research. Reconstructing hemoglobins that are hundreds of millions of years old almost almost seems like science fiction, he said. And I feel lucky to encounter Schrage’s work and this particular image, which feels like a science communication hallucination—an image that made me gasp, my own, humble hemoglobin scurrying throughout my bloodstream.
These are the most detailed images of the moon ever taken on Earth
We’ve all heard the statistic that the Apollo 11 spacecraft successfully took us to the moon with less computing power than an iPhone.
Now, a prototype radar system being tested at the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia just took the most detailed photo of the moon from Earth using a transmitter less powerful than a microwave oven.
“It’s pretty amazing what we’ve been able to capture so far, using less power than a common household appliance,” Patrick Taylor, radar division head for GBO and NRAO, said in a statement.
Related: Arecibo isn’t the first radio telescope to unexpectedly fail. Here’s what we can learn from Green Bank’s collapse.
The prototype is a collaboration between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank Observatory (GBO), and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RIS). The partnership is designing a next-generation planetary radar system for the GBT that could be used to study celestial bodies in our solar system.
For the test, engineers equipped GBT with a radar transmitter using 700 watts of power. They pointed the transmitter at the moon and radar echoes were returned to the NRAO’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which has 10 antennas across the United States. The result was a hyper-detailed image of the Tycho Crater with 16.4-foot (5-meter) resolution — the highest-resolution image of the moon from Earth ever taken.
Image 1 of 3
The project’s long-term goal is to equip the GBT with a 500-kilowatt radar, then use the VLBA and the future Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) as receivers. With nearly 1,000 times the output power of the prototype transmitter, the resulting images would be even sharper.
The team tested the prototype on a space rock as well as the moon. “In our tests, we were able to zero in on an asteroid 2.1 million kilometers [1.3 million miles] away from us — more than five times the distance from the Earth to the moon,” Taylor said. “The asteroid is about a kilometer [0.6 miles] in size, which is large enough to cause global devastation should there be an impact.”
And radar is a vital tool for astronomers looking to precisely map an asteroid’s trajectory and evaluate whether it poses a threat to Earth. “With the high-power system, we could study more objects much further away,” Patrick said. “When it comes to developing strategies for possible impacts, having more warning time is everything.”
Follow Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Striking new images reveal beauty of forgotten, and largest, amber fossil of a flower
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Almost 40 million years ago a flower bloomed in a Baltic conifer forest. Dripping tree resin encased the petals and pollen, forever showcasing an ephemeral moment in our planet’s past.
Scientists have taken a fresh look at the unique amber fossil, which was first documented in 1872 as belonging to a pharmacist called Kowalewski in what’s now Kaliningrad, Russia.
The striking fossil had been languishing largely forgotten in the collection of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Berlin (BGR), according to Eva-Maria Sadowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin’s natural history museum, and author of the new study.
She said she heard about the fossilized flower, officially known as specimen X4088, in passing from a retired colleague, who she thought was exaggerating.
“He told me that he once visited the BGR and that (he) saw the most amazing and largest amber flower in their collection. I was not aware that they had an amber collection. So I asked the curator of the BGR collection if I could come to see their collection – and there I found the specimen X4088,” she said via email.
“I was more than surprised to see such a large flower inclusion.”
At 28 millimeters (1.1 inches) across, it’s the largest known flower to be fossilized in amber – three times the size of similar fossils.
Sadowski extracted and examined pollen from the amber. She found that the flower had been misidentified when it was first studied.
“The original genus name of this specimen was Stewartia of the plant family Theaceae. But we could show in our study that this was not correct, mainly based on the pollen morphology. But when the specimen was first studied in the 19th century, they (had) not discovered or studied the pollen,” she said.
The flower is closely related to a genus of flowering plants common in Asia today known as Symplocos – shrubs or trees that sport white or yellow flowers.
Originally named Stewartia kowalewskii, the authors propose a new name for the flower of Symplocos kowalewskii.
Amber fossils offer a tantalizing, three dimensional look at the past. As well as plants and flowers, a dinosaur tail, a crab, a hell ant, a spider mom and her young, an ancient bird’s foot and a lizard’s skull have been found entombed in globs of tree resin.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.
Enormous ‘Swiss cheese’ bubble surrounding Earth mapped in incredible new images
An enormous,1,000-light-year-wide “superbubble” surrounds our planet. Now, astronomers have made the first ever 3D map of its magnetic field.
The gigantic structure, known as the “Local Bubble,” is a hollow blob of diffuse, hot plasma enclosed by a shell of cold gas and dust along whose surface stars form. It is just one of numerous hollows found in the Milky Way — making our galaxy resemble an enormous slice of Swiss cheese.
Superbubbles are shock waves from the death throes of multiple massive stars, which in their final acts explode in enormous supernovas that blast out the gas and dust needed to birth new stars. As time passes, other stars, such as our own, wander inside the cavities left behind by these explosions.
Related: Earth is at the center of a 1,000-light-year-wide ‘Swiss cheese’ bubble carved out by supernovas
Despite having some insight into superbubble formation, astronomers are still unsure how these giant bubbles evolve through interaction with our galaxy’s magnetic field, and how this impacts star and galaxy formation. To find out more, a team of astronomers, working at a summer research program at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, charted the Local Bubble’s magnetic field.
“Space is full of these superbubbles that trigger the formation of new stars and planets and influence the overall shapes of galaxies,” Theo O’Neill, who at the time was an undergraduate student in astronomy, physics and statistics from the University of Virginia, said in a statement. “By learning more about the exact mechanics that drive the Local Bubble, in which the Sun lives today, we can learn more about the evolution and dynamics of superbubbles in general.”
The Milky Way, like many other galaxies, is filled with a magnetic field that gently steers stars, dust and gas into mind-bending structures such as gigantic, bone-like filaments. Astronomers are unsure what gives rise to galactic magnetic fields. The Milky Way’s magnetic field, though considerably weaker than Earth’s, permeates throughout our galaxy and deep its outer halo, subtly influencing the formation of everything around it. However, as the magnetic field’s force is weak compared with the force of gravity, and it only acts on charged particles, astronomers have long omitted magnetism from their calculations. This makes sense in the short term, but over vast cosmic timescales, it could mean that their models are overlooking substantial effects.
“From a basic physics standpoint, we’ve long known that magnetic fields must play important roles in many astrophysical phenomena,” Alyssa Goodman, an astronomer at Harvard University who was one of the mentors for the research program, said in the statement. “But studying these magnetic fields has been notoriously difficult. Today’s computer simulations and all-sky surveys may just finally be good enough to start really incorporating magnetic fields into our broader picture of how the universe works, from the motions of tiny dust grains on up to the dynamics of galaxy clusters.”
To chart the magnetic field map, the astronomers used previous information from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope, which had inferred the rough boundaries of the Local Bubble from the concentrations of distant cosmic dust. With this in hand, the researchers turned to data from another ESA space telescope, Planck, which showed the faint microwave emissions of polarized light from the dust. As the polarization, or the direction of vibration, of the light is a key giveaway to the magnetic field acting upon the dust, the astronomers used it to stitch together the data points into a vast 3D tapestry of the superbubble’s surface.
The researchers note that to make their map they have made some big assumptions they will need to test — notably that the polarized dust lies on the bubble’s surface — but once they have fine-tuned its accuracy, they believe it could become an invaluable tool for studying star formation across our galactic backyard.
“With this map, we can really start to probe the influences of magnetic fields on star formation in superbubbles,” Goodman said. “And for that matter, get a better grasp on how these fields influence numerous other cosmic phenomena.”