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US

Oklahoma police ‘actively looking’ for missing 4-year-old Athena Brownfield with infrared helicopters, boats

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A 4-year-old girl from Cyril, Oklahoma, is still missing after she disappeared earlier this week and authorities are asking for the public to assist in the investigation.

Athena Brownfield has been missing since last Tuesday, and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) and Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) have deployed infrared helicopters, boats, four-wheelers, and personnel on the ground to search the nearby area in an effort to locate her, according to the OHP Trooper Eric Foster. 

“We’ve been in the air in helicopters with infrared, on the ground, around town there have been a lot of grid searches on foot and on four-wheelers, things like that,” Foster said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon, FOX 25 reported. “Our Emergency Response Team (ERT), which is specially trained to go on foot in search of people and things, are out in coordination with civilians who have come and wanted to volunteer their time and effort.”

The bureau’s PIO Brook Arbeitman confirmed this information, adding: “We are still very actively looking for her using all of our tools. We are finding things that we hope might give us clues as to where she is, but we are still actively looking for her.”

Athena Brownfield, 4, has been missing since at least Tuesday and authorities are continuing to search for her.

MISSING MADALINA COJOCARI SEARCH EXPANDS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA: REPORT

Authorities also utilized Oklahoma Department of Corrections dogs to help search, per the report.

“This is a very active and ongoing investigation, and right now our top priority is locating her. And sorting out who is responsible will come next. We need to find this little girl,” Arbeitman said. “She’s on her own in the elements. So, is that endangered? Yeah. But is she the victim of physical harm? That’s yet to be determined.”

This ground search continued all Wednesday but concluded after volunteers searched “the entire town,” Arbeitman said.

“Today at 4 p.m., the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) Emergency Response Team (ERT) concluded a grid search with local volunteers. Those volunteers have been released after searching the entire town, every known vacant house and local waterways,” OSBI added in a separate statement Wednesday afternoon.

It added: “Currently, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) has search dogs in the area and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBNDD) flew their drones over the community.”

Athena was reported missing around 2 p.m. Tuesday after a postal worker found her 5-year-old sister alone near their residence in Cyril, which is located about 70 miles (113 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. 

The older girl was described as frightened but not needing medical care.

CALIFORNIA AUTHORITIES SAY FINDING MISSING 5-YEAR-OLD IS ‘TOP PRIORITY’ AS SEARCH RESUMES WEDNESDAY MORNING

It is not clear how long she had been missing before her disappearance was reported.

“We’re still working on putting together an exact timeline,” Arbeitman said.

Details regarding the home where the girls were staying are also not immediately clear and the whereabouts of the girls’ parents or guardians at the time of Athena’s disappearance are not known.

“That’s part of the ongoing investigation,” Arbeitman said Wednesday morning when asked about who was supposed to be watching the girls, according to KOCO News.

The 5-year-old has been placed in protective custody.

A Oklahoma City Police Department vehicle.
(Oklahoma City Police Department)

BODY FOUND BURIED IN DETROIT IDENTIFIED AS MISSING WOMAN

Many details about the 4-year-old, who authorities initially said was 3 but have since corrected, are not known. Subsequently, an Amber Alert has not been issued as her disappearance does not meet specific guidelines, Foster said.

“There’s specific guidelines and things that we have to follow,” he explained. “Not every part of that guideline came into play in this. So the next best thing that we could do was issue a Missing and Endangered notification that went out in a 15-mile radius from where she went missing.”

Law enforcement officials are continuing to conduct interviews and are reviewing surveillance videos in the area. They are also asking anyone with doorbell cameras or footage of the area near the 200 block of West Nebraska to turn over their resources to help in these efforts.

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“The entire law enforcement community assisting with locating Athena appreciates local volunteers, restaurants, churches and all the tips that have been phoned in,” the OSBI said.

Residents are encouraged to search their own property for Athena.

Fox News Digital is aware of social media posts regarding Athena’s parents or details surrounding her living situation but the OSBI is advising people and outlets not to share unconfirmed details as it could hinder the investigation.  

Anyone with information about Athena Brownfield’s disappearance is asked to contact the Cyril Police Department directly at (580) 464-2216, the OSBI tip line at 800-522-8017 or email tips@osbi.ok.gov

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Technology

Some day soon we might be making popcorn with infrared poppers

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Enlarge / In the future, our kitchen gadgets might include an infrared popcorn popper.

There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2022, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Researchers figured out how to make tasty popcorn with infrared cooking.

Most of us rely on counter-top air poppers or microwaves to whip up a tasty popcorn snack. But infrared cooking offers another viable alternative, according to a September paper published in the journal ACS Food Science and Technology.

Popcorn is the only grain in the corn family that pops in response to the application of heat—specifically, temperatures above 180° C. It has a lot to do with the structure of the kernels. Each has a tough outer shell, called the pericarp, within which lies the germ (seed embryo) and the endosperm. The latter holds trapped water (popcorn kernels need about 14 percent water to pop) and starch granules.

As the kernel heats up, the water inside the endosperm turns into superheated steam, increasing the pressure inside the pericarp. When that pressure gets high enough, the pericarp ruptures, and the steam and starch are released in a foam, which then cools down and solidifies into the snack we know and love. A popped kernel is been 20 to 50 times larger than the original kernel.

Enlarge / Scanning electron microscopy of expanded popcorns at different stages of puffing through infrared

M. Shavandi et al., 2021

Last year, Mahdi Shavandi and his coauthors at the Iran Research Organization for Science and Technology in Tehran successfully demonstrated the proof of principle for their approach to making popcorn with infrared heat. With this method, a heat source like fire, gas or energy waves is in direct contact with the food, rather than a heating element like a pan or grill grate. It’s often likened to broiling or cooking food over a campfire. Fans argue that this method is fast, highly energy efficient, and environmentally friendly when compared to more conventional means of heating.

It’s already used for such purposes as heating, drying, roasting, cooking, baking, and even microbial decontamination, per the authors. And infrared grills are increasingly popular. But could you use infrared cooking to produce popcorn with all the desirable characteristics we know and love, and convince us to switch from our beloved microwaveable brands? Shavandi et al. thought it might be possible.

They placed popcorn grains—harvested in Iran during the 2019-2020 season—into a Pyrex petri dish with a bit of oil inside a stainless steel chamber, which was outfitted with two infrared lamps and a power supply. The chamber rotated, holding the corn kernels close to the infrared lamps. The popcorn was then popped, with any unpopped samples removed. The scientists measured the yields and took SEM images of the popcorn for a better look at the structure. They found that the highest popping yield (100 percent) and volume expansion occurred at 550 W IR power, with the samples at a distance of 10 cm from the lamps.

Enlarge / Schematic diagram of the pilot-scale infrared popcorn popper.

M. Shavandi et al., 2022

But would consumers like it? This latest paper follows up on that proof of principle to take a closer look at how the continuous infrared cooking process affects key features of popcorn: color, shape, odor, taste, and texture (which is influenced by how much the popcorn expands), all of which contribute to the sensory pleasures of popcorn. They used the same prototype infrared popcorn popper as before for their experiments, testing power levels of 600, 700, and 800 W. Then a sensory panel of taste testers evaluated the final products on a scale of 1 to 5.

The team found that using 700 W power produced the highest yield of fully or semi-popped popcorn. That power level also produced the highest ratings (4 or higher) by the sensory panel, who identified those batches as having the best color, taste, and firmness. “This is the first study on the continuous infrared expansion technology for popcorn popping, and the findings show that the IR expansion method is very efficient in the popcorn popping process,” the authors concluded. So maybe in the near future our kitchen gadgets will include an infrared popcorn popper.

DOI: ACS Food Science and Technology, 2022. 10.1021/acsfoodscitech.2c00188 (About DOIs).

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Science

Side-by-side Jupiter images show James Webb’s infrared prowess. It spots auroras, rings, and faint galaxies Hubble can’t see clearly.

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The Hubble Space Telescope’s image of Jupiter in the visible light spectrum, is on the left. On the right, the James Webb Space Telescope’s image of Jupiter in infrared.Hubble, NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt

  • NASA released new snaps of Jupiter taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in August.

  • The Hubble Space Telescope has also taken Jupiter images, but Webb reveals details Hubble couldn’t see.

  • Astronomers say Webb’s images give a more complete view of Jupiter’s auroras, rings, and moons.

While the Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping gorgeous photos of Jupiter for decades, new Jupiter images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in August, invite comparison. Studied side by side, Webb’s shots reveal stunning new details of the gas giant that Hubble couldn’t detect.

“JWST isn’t giving us something clearer than Hubble here, but it is giving us something different,” James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, told Insider. “I think of JWST as giving us an extra sense.”

Often described as the successor to Hubble, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, after more than two decades of development. Since that time, the $10 billion telescope has traveled more than 1 million miles from Earth and is now stationed in a gravitationally stable orbit, collecting infrared light and peering at objects whose light was emitted more than 13.5 billion years ago, which Hubble can’t see. This is because this light has been shifted into the infrared wavelengths that Webb is specifically designed to detect.

The result: Compared to Hubble, Webb offers sharper and crisper images, and new details of Jupiter’s auroras, storm systems, rings, and tiny moons.

The Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter in ultraviolet light is on the left. The James Webb Space Telescope image of Jupiter is on the right.Hubble, NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt

Webb captured the new Jupiter images using its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which translates infrared light into colors the human eye can see. The image of Jupiter taken by Webb, above right, was artificially colored to make specific features stand out. Red coloring highlights the planet’s stunning auroras, while light reflected from clouds appears blue. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — an enormous storm that has been swirling for centuries — is so bright with reflected sunlight that it appears white.

The Hubble Space Telescope can also spot spot Jupiter’s auroras when capturing ultraviolet light. In the above left image, Hubble captured optical observations of the planet’s northern lights in a composite.

Still, Webb’s infrared image shows the auroras in greater detail, lighting up both the planet’s poles.

Auroras are colorful displays of light that are not unique to Earth. Jupiter has the brightest auroras in the solar system, according to NASA. On both Earth and Jupiter, auroras occur when charged particles, such as protons or electrons, interact with the magnetic field — known as the magnetosphere — that surrounds a planet. Jupiter’s magnetic field is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s.

In his research, O’Donoghue studies Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, several thousand miles above the clouds you can see in visible images. “With JWST, we can see Jupiter’s infrared auroras in the extended upper atmosphere above the planet,” O’Donoghue said.

While Hubble can spot Jupiter’s auroras when capturing ultraviolet light, Webb’s infrared image shows the auroras in greater detail.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” O’Donoghue said, adding, “I can’t quite believe we’ve got that shot from such a vast distance. It really speaks to how effective JWST is at picking up faint light.”

The Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter, left, with its icy moon Europa. On the right, The James Webb Space Telescope’s image of Jupiter with its tiny moons, Amalthea and Adrastea.NASA, ESA, Hubble, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmid

Webb’s new images of Jupiter show two of the planet’s moons, Amalthea and Adrastea. Adrastea, the smaller of the two, measures just 12 miles across, according to NASA. In comparison, Hubble’s image of Jupiter shows the planet’s ocean-filled moon, Europa, which measures 1,940 miles across.

Astronomers believe Europa’s ocean makes it a promising place to look for life within our solar system.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a picture of Jupiter’s tiny moon, Amalthea.NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay

Webb has captured images of icy Europa, which were released in July, but the new snapshot is taken at an angle where Europa cannot be observed. Instead, Webb’s new Jupiter image showcases two smaller, fainter moons which can be seen more clearly in infrared. Jupiter has 79 moons, according to NASA.

“This is one of my favorite images of Jupiter of all time,” O’Donoghue said.

The bottom image of Jupiter, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, shows the planet’s thin rings, which are made of cosmic debris.Hubble, NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt

Webb also spotted Jupiter’s thin rings, which are made of dust particles formed when cosmic debris smashed into four of Jupiter’s moons — including Amalthea, which is also pictured in the newly released images.

“The JWST image is, of course, stunning,” Luke Moore, an astronomer at Boston University, told Insider. “Particularly, the level of spatial detail is impressive in the infrared — due to JWST’s large primary mirror — and the contrast is incredible, as you can see the incredibly faint rings, as well as the much brighter planet.”

The fuzzy spots in the background of the James Webb Space Telescope’s images of Jupiter, right, are galaxies.Hubble, NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt

The fuzzy spots lurking at the bottom of the frame in Webb’s image are likely galaxies “photobombing” Webb’s image of Jupiter, according to NASA. Those faint galaxies are hidden in Hubble’s snap of Jupiter, in which the planet — and its moon Europa — are seen against an inky black expanse.

Because of Webb’s ability to gather infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, it is able to cut through cosmic dust and see far into the past. One of the new telescope’s main goals is to find galaxies so distant that their light travels almost the entire history of the universe to reach Webb. NASA says Webb is able to peer farther than other telescopes, like Hubble, capturing images of extremely faint galaxies that emitted their light in the first billion years or so after the Big Bang.

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Science

How Are Webb Telescope Images Colorized?

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On the left is a monochromatic image showing infrared data from Webb of the Southern Ring Nebula. On the right is a processed image showing the same view in full color.
Image: Gizmodo/NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

On July 12, the first full-color images from the Webb Space Telescope showed countless nebulae, galaxies, and a gassy exoplanet as they had never been seen before. But Webb only collects infrared and near-infrared light, which the human eye cannot see—so where are these gorgeous colors coming from?

Image developers on the Webb team are tasked with turning the telescope’s infrared image data into some of the most vivid views of the cosmos we’ve ever had. They assign various infrared wavelengths to colors on the visible spectrum, the familiar reds, blues, yellows, etc. But while the processed images from the Webb team aren’t literally what the telescope saw, they’re hardly inaccurate.

“Something I’ve been trying to change people’s minds about is to stop getting hung up on the idea of ‘is this what this would look like if I could fly out there in a spaceship and look at it?’” said Joe DePasquale, a senior data image developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a phone call with Gizmodo. “You don’t ask a biologist if you can somehow shrink down to the size of a cell and look at the coronavirus.”

Webb’s first test images helped check its mirrors’ alignment and captured an orange-tinted shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Those early snapshots were not representative color images; one used a monochromatic filter (its image was grayscale) and the other just translated infrared light into the red-to-yellow visible color bands, so the team could see certain features of the cloud they imaged. But now, with the telescope up and running, the images that get released are full of blazing color, like this recent portrait of the Cartwheel Galaxy.

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Astronomy is often done outside the visible spectrum, because many of the most interesting objects in space are shining brightly in ultraviolet, x-rays, and even radio waves (which category light falls into depends on the photon’s wavelength). The Webb Telescope is designed to see infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than red visible light but shorter than microwaves.

Infrared light can penetrate thick clouds of gas and dust in space, allowing researchers to see previously hidden secrets of the universe. Especially intriguing to scientists is that light from the early universe has been stretched as the universe has expanded, meaning what was once ultraviolet or visible light may now be infrared (what’s known as “redshifted” light).

“These are instruments that we’ve designed to extend the power of our vision, to go beyond what our eyes are capable of doing to see light that our eyes are not sensitive to, and to resolve objects that we can probably see with just our eyes,” DePasquale said. “I’m trying to bring out the most detail and the most richness of color and complexity that’s inherent in the data without actually changing anything.”

Webb’s raw images are so laden with data that they need to be scaled down before they can be translated into visible light. The images also need to be cleaned of artifacts like cosmic rays and reflections from bright stars that hit the telescope’s detectors. If you look at a Webb image before processing work is done, it’ll look like a black rectangle peppered with some white dots.

A raw image of the Carina Nebula as seen by NIRCam, before the infrared light is translated into visible wavelengths.
Image: Space Telescope Science Institute

“I think there’s some connotations that go along with ‘colorizing’ or ‘false color’ that imply there’s some process going on where we’re arbitrarily choosing colors to create a color image,” DePasquale said. “Representative color is the most preferred term for the kind of work that we do, because I think it encompasses the work that we do of translating light to create a true color image, but in a wavelength range that our eyes are not sensitive to.”

Longer infrared waves are assigned redder colors, and the shortest infrared wavelengths are assigned bluer colors. (Blue and violet light has the shortest wavelengths within the visible spectrum, while red has the longest.) The process is called chromatic ordering, and the spectrum is split into as many colors as the team needs to capture the full spectrum of light depicted in the image.

“We have filters on the instruments that collect certain wavelengths of light, which we then apply a color that is most closely what we think it will be on the [visible] spectrum,” said Alyssa Pagan, a science visuals developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a phone call with Gizmodo.

The chromatic ordering depends too on what elements are being imaged. When working with narrow-band wavelengths in optical light—oxygen, ionized hydrogen, and sulfur, Pagan suggests—the latter two both emit in red. So the hydrogen might get shifted to green visible light, in order to give the viewer more information.

“It’s a balance between the art and the science, because you want to showcase science and the features, and sometimes those two things don’t necessarily work together,” Pagan added.

Webb’s first representative color images were released July 12, over six months after the telescope launched from an ESA spaceport in French Guiana. From there, Webb traveled about a million miles to L2, a point in space where gravitational effects allow spacecraft to stay in place without burning much fuel.

The telescope unfolded itself on the way to L2, so once it was there, mission scientists could get started on aligning the $10 billion observatory’s mirrors and commissioning its instruments. The telescope has four instruments: a near-infrared camera (NIRCam), a near-infrared spectrograph, a mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), and a fine guidance sensor and slitless spectrograph for pointing at targets precisely and characterizing exoplanet atmospheres.

The voluminous amounts of dust in some galaxies and nebulae are transparent to NIRCam, allowing it to capture bright stars at shorter wavelengths. MIRI, on the other hand, can observe discs of material that will give way to planets as well as dust warmed by starlight.

When telescope images are being assembled, image processors work with instrument scientists to decide which features of a given object should be highlighted in the image: its piping hot gas, perhaps, or a cool dusty tail.

When Webb imaged Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, the finished product was a 150-million-pixel image made up of 1,000 images taken by both MIRI and NIRCam. When just seen by MIRI, though, hot dust dominates the image. In the background of the MIRI images, distant galaxies glow in different colors; DePasquale said the team calls them “skittles.”

DePasquale and Pagan helped create the Webb images as we would eventually see them, rich in color and cosmic meaning. In the case of the sweeping shot of the Carina Nebula’s cosmic cliffs, different filters captured the ionized blue gas and red dust. In initial passes at the nebula image, the gas obscured the dust’s structure, scientists asked the image processing team to “tone down the gas” a bit, Pagan said.

Collecting light in Webb’s hexagonal mirrors is only half the battle when it comes to seeing the distant universe. Translating what’s there is another beast entirely.

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Science

The James Webb Space Telescope May Have Already Found The Oldest Galaxy Ever Seen

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Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analyzed the data said Wednesday.

 

Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years earlier than anything previously identified, Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics told AFP. 

“We’re potentially looking at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen,” he said.

The more distant objects are from us, the longer it takes for their light to reach us, and so to gaze back into the distant universe is to see into the deep past.

Though GLASS-z13 existed in the earliest era of the Universe, its exact age remains unknown as it could have formed any time within the first 300 million years.

GLASS-z13 was spotted in so-called “early release” data from the orbiting observatory’s main infrared imager, called NIRcam – but the discovery was not revealed in the first image set published by NASA last week.

 

When translated from infrared into the visible spectrum, the galaxy appears as a blob of red with white in its center, as part of a wider image of the distant cosmos called a “deep field”.

Naidu and colleagues – a team totaling 25 astronomers from across the world – have submitted their findings to a scientific journal.

For now, the research is posted on a preprint server, so it comes with the caveat that it has yet to be peer-reviewed – but it has already set the global astronomy community abuzz.​

“Astronomy records are crumbling already, and more are shaky,” tweeted NASA’s chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen.

“Yes, I tend to only cheer once science results clear peer review. But, this looks very promising,” he added.

Naidu said another team of astronomers led by Marco Castellano that worked on the same data has achieved similar conclusions, “so that gives us confidence”.

‘Work to be done’

One of the great promises of Webb is its ability to find the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

Because these are so distant from Earth, by the time their light reaches us, it has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe and shifted to the infrared region of the light spectrum, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

 

Naidu and colleagues combed through this infrared data of the distant Universe, searching for a telltale signature of extremely distant galaxies.

Below a particular threshold of infrared wavelength, all photons – packets of energy – are absorbed by the neutral hydrogen of the Universe that lies between the object and the observer.

By using data collected through different infrared filters pointed at the same region of space, they were able to detect where these drop-offs in photons occurred, from which they inferred the presence of these most distant galaxies.

“We searched all the early data for galaxies with this very striking signature, and these were the two systems that had by far the most compelling signature,” said Naidu.

One of these is GLASS-z13, while the other, not as ancient, is GLASS-z11.

“There’s strong evidence, but there’s still work to be done,” said Naidu.

In particular, the team wants to ask Webb’s managers for telescope time to carry out spectroscopy – an analysis of light that reveals detailed properties – to measure its precise distance.

“Right now, our guess for the distance is based on what we don’t see – it would be great to have an answer for what we do see,” said Naidu.

Already, however, the team have detected surprising properties.

For instance, the galaxy is the mass of a billion Suns, which is “potentially very surprising, and that is something we don’t really understand” given how soon after the Big Bang it formed, Naidu said.

Launched last December and fully operational since last week, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with astronomers confident it will herald a new era of discovery.

© Agence France-Presse

 



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Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope imaged Jupiter’s rings and moons, in white-hot infrared

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Jupiter and its moon Europa (left), are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument.NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

NASA has cast its most powerful infrared eye on Jupiter with a new set of images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The new observatory, orbiting the sun about 1 million miles from Earth, proved it can peer more than 13 billion light-years across the universe this week, when NASA released its first full-color images. They show countless galaxies, stars, and clouds of dust in the distant universe.

JWST can image closer, more familiar objects, too. On Thursday, NASA released a series of new JWST images showing Jupiter in stunning detail. Alongside the gas giant are its moons Europa, Thebe, and Metis. Scientists think Europa has a saltwater ocean, deep below its thick ice crust, which could harbor alien life.

Even Jupiter’s thin rings are visible in some of the new images. The rings are made of dust particles hurled into space when micrometeoroids crash into nearby moons. Nobody knew they existed until the Voyager spacecraft passed Jupiter in 1979, looked back, and saw the rings silhouetted against the sun.

Jupiter and its moons seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument short-wavelength filter (left) and long-wavelength filter (right).NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

Europa’s shadow appears just to the left of Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth. The storm is white in this picture, because of how scientists processed the infrared data the telescope beamed back.

“I couldn’t believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were,” Stefanie Milam, a planetary scientist on NASA’s JWST team, said in a blog post revealing the images. “It’s really exciting to think of the capability and opportunity that we have for observing these kinds of objects in our solar system.”

Jupiter and its moons and rings, as captured by JWST in short infrared wavelengths (left) and long infrared wavelengths (right).NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

JWST captured the new images using its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) filter. The images that clearly show the bands of Jupiter’s atmosphere were captured using a filter for short wavelengths of light. Others, like the above image showing Jupiter as a ball of bright white light, went through a filter for long wavelengths.

To make sure the telescope can find and track stars in the background of bright objects like Jupiter, NASA focused the telescope on a distant star as Jupiter moved past. That resulted in the below animation of Jupiter and Europa zipping by.

Jupiter and its moon Europa are seen in this animation made from three images taken through the NIRCam instrument short-wavelength filter.NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

“Combined with the deep field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped plan these observations, said in a statement.

Jupiter and some of its moons are seen through NIRCam’s 3.23 micron filter.NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

This is just the beginning of JWST casting its eye across our solar system. NASA plans for the telescope to study all the outer planets — from Mars outward — along with many of their moons. That includes Europa. In the coming years, JWST might be able to analyze light from water plumes shooting out of Europa’s underground ocean, through its ice crust, and into space. That data could tell scientists about the composition of that ocean.

“I think that’s just one of the coolest things that we’ll be able to do with this telescope in the solar system,” Milam said.

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Science

One of Webb Space Telescope’s Primary Instruments Ready To See Cosmos in Over 2,000 Infrared Colors

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This animation shows the path light will follow as it hits the primary James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mirror, and is reflected to the secondary, and then in through the aft optics assembly where the tertiary and fine steering mirrors are. The light is then reflected and split and directed to the science instruments by pick-off mirrors. JWST is a three-mirror anastigmat telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

One of the

The Image Behind the Spectrum. This is a test detector image from the NIRISS instrument operated in its single-object slitless spectroscopy (SOSS) mode while pointing at a bright star. Each color seen in the image corresponds to a specific infrared wavelength between 0.6 and 2.8 microns. The black lines seen on the spectra are the telltale signature of hydrogen atoms present in the star. NIRISS is a contribution from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to the Webb project that provides unique observational capabilities that complement its other onboard instruments. Credit: NASA, CSA, and NIRISS team/Loic Albert, University of Montreal

“I’m so excited and thrilled to think that we’ve finally reached the end of this two-decade-long journey of Canada’s contribution to the mission. All four NIRISS modes are not only ready, but the instrument as a whole is performing significantly better than we predicted. I am pinching myself at the thought that we are just days away from the start of science operations, and in particular from NIRISS probing its first exoplanet atmospheres,” said René Doyon, principal investigator for NIRISS, as well as Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor, at the University of Montreal.

With NIRISS postlaunch commissioning activities concluded, the Webb team will continue to focus on checking off the remaining five modes on its other instruments.

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Science

Comparing the Incredible Webb Space Telescope Images to Other Infrared Observatories

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The evolution of infrared astronomy, from Spitzer to WISE to JWST. Credit: Andras Gaspar

The images released by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team last week aren’t officially ‘first light’ images from the new telescope, but in a way, it feels like they are. These stunning views provide the initial indications of just how powerful JWST will be, and just how much infrared astronomy is about to improve.

The images were released following the completion of the long process to fully focus the telescope’s mirror segments. Engineers are saying JWST’s optical performance is “better than the most optimistic predictions,” and astronomers are beside themselves with excitement.

“It hasn’t broken the laws of physics, but does lie at the very best end of possibilities thanks to the extraordinary efforts of many over decades,” said Mark McCaughrean, the European Space Agency’s Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration and part of JWST’s Science Working Group, on Twitter.

In their excitement, astronomers began posting comparison images — from previous telescopes to JWST in the same field of view — showing the evolution of improvement in resolution.

Astronomer Andras Gaspar, who works with JWST’s mid-infrared instrument, MIRI, compiled images from the WISE (Wide Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope to JWST’s image of the same field of view, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the

How awesome is JWST/MIRI? Well, let’s compare the latest press release image to that of the WISE all-sky survey at 4.6 microns. This is the closest wavelength image I could find. Spitzer IRAC would have been better (slightly higher resolution and similar wavelength). https://t.co/EXqP57sULt

Then he realized Spitzer also has taken an image of the LMC, and then created the comparison of the three telescopes, seen in our lead image.

“To be fair, WISE with its 40 cm diameter telescope was only half the size of Spitzer’s [85cm primary] but both of them are tiny compared to JWST [6.5 meter primary]” Gaspar said on Twitter. “This is what you get with a large aperture! Resolution and sensitivity. And MIRI gives mid-IR! HST [

Not quite enough distant background galaxies for my taste, but #JWST is looking ever more awesome! https://t.co/pyJ8VH4fUo
Since #JWST’s MIRI is getting lots of before-and-after love, I thought I’d do the same for the Fine Guidance Sensor: here’s one of its two fields in the Large Magellanic Cloud as previously imaged in the near-IR by @eso’s VISTA survey telescope.
1/ https://t.co/G4yfhPWTqQ

The astronomers and engineers actually seem astounded how good JWST’s resolution is turning out to be. You may find that surprising. I mean, don’t they do tests on the ground to know the capabilities of telescopes before they launch? Yes, but ground tests don’t always tell the whole story, as Marshall Perrin, deputy project scientist for Webb at the Space Telescope Science Institute explained on Twitter.

“Yes, we had tested the whole optical train in cryo in Houston – but that didn’t actually tell us the ultimate performance,” he wrote. “Not fully. In many ways, the ground test environment was challenging and different from space.”

Perrin explains how gravity plays a role, in that JWST’s mirrors are designed to have a certain shape in Zero-g, but in all ground tests they were inevitably deformed by gravity, requiring numerical models to compensate.

Then, there’s no way to test on the ground how the telescope might work in Zero-g, as far as stability or if there will be any vibrations from the spacecraft. And while the ground test at Johnson Space Center’s thermal vacuum chamber could match the temperatures JWST would experience in space, Perrin said certain effects in the test chamber induced optical instabilities.

“A performance prediction must be not just a handwave or a wish, it has to be based in quantitative numerical models and budgets including assessing risks and uncertainties,” he wrote.

So, while predictions are useful, there are always uncertainties. For now, let’s savor the joy and wonder JWST is already providing.

The official first light images are predicted to come in July.

Originally published on Universe Today.



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Now, We can Finally Compare Webb to Other Infrared Observatories

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The images released by the James Webb Space Telescope team last week aren’t officially ‘first light’ images from the new telescope, but in a way, it feels like they are. These stunning views provide the initial indications of just how powerful JWST will be, and just how much infrared astronomy is about to improve.

The images were released following the completion of the long process to fully focus the telescope’s mirror segments. Engineers are saying JWST’s optical performance is “better than the most optimistic predictions,” and astronomers are beside themselves with excitement.

“It hasn’t broken the laws of physics, but does lie at the very best end of possibilities thanks to the extraordinary efforts of many over decades,” said Mark McCaughrean, the European Space Agency’s Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration and part of JWST’s Science Working Group, on Twitter.

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In their excitement, astronomers began posting comparison images — from previous telescopes to JWST in the same field of view — showing the evolution of improvement in resolution.

Astronomer Andras Gaspar, who works with JWST’s mid-infrared instrument, MIRI, compiled images from the WISE (Wide Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope to JWST’s image of the same field of view, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Then he realized Spitzer also has taken an image of the LMC, and then created the comparison of the three telescopes, seen in our lead image.

“To be fair, WISE with its 40 cm diameter telescope was only half the size of Spitzer’s [85cm primary] but both of them are tiny compared to JWST [6.5 meter primary]” Gaspar said on Twitter. “This is what you get with a large aperture! Resolution and sensitivity. And MIRI gives mid-IR! HST [Hubble Space Telescope}] can’t get this wavelength.”

And there’s more:

The astronomers and engineers actually seem astounded how good JWST’s resolution is turning out to be. You may find that surprising. I mean, don’t they do tests on the ground to know the capabilities of telescopes before they launch? Yes, but ground tests don’t always tell the whole story, as Marshall Perrin, deputy project scientist for Webb at the Space Telescope Science Institute explained on Twitter.

“Yes, we had tested the whole optical train in cryo in Houston – but that didn’t actually tell us the ultimate performance,” he wrote. “Not fully. In many ways, the ground test environment was challenging and different from space.”

Perrin explains how gravity plays a role, in that JWST’s mirrors are designed to have a certain shape in Zero-g, but in all ground tests they were inevitably deformed by gravity, requiring numerical models to compensate.

Then, there’s no way to test on the ground how the telescope might work in Zero-g, as far as stability or if there will be any vibrations from the spacecraft. And while the ground test at Johnson Space Center’s thermal vacuum chamber could match the temperatures JWST would experience in space, Perrin said certain effects in the test chamber induced optical instabilities.

“A performance prediction must be not just a handwave or a wish, it has to be based in quantitative numerical models and budgets including assessing risks and uncertainties,” he wrote.

So, while predictions are useful, there are always uncertainties.  For now, let’s savor the joy and wonder JWST is already providing.

The official first light images are predicted to come in July.

Lead image caption: The evolution of infrared astronomy, from Spitzer to WISE to JWST. Image credit: Andras Gaspar.



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5 Out-of-This-World Telescope Photos of Space to Get You Excited For The JWST Launch

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The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It’s also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes have shown us.

 

Astronomers rarely use their telescopes to simply take pictures. The pictures in astrophysics are usually generated by a process of scientific inference and imagination, sometimes visualized in artist’s impressions of what the data suggests.

Choosing just a handful of images was not easy. I limited my selection to images produced by publicly-funded telescopes and which reveal some interesting science. I tried to avoid very popular images which have already been viewed widely.

The selection below is a personal one and I’m sure many readers could advocate for different choices. Feel free to share them in the comments.

1. Jupiter’s poles

(Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran/CC BY-NC-SA; NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS)

The first image I’ve chosen was produced by NASA’s Juno mission, which is currently orbiting Jupiter. The image was taken in October 2017 when the spacecraft was 18,906 kilometers away from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds. It captures a cloud system in the planet’s Northern Hemisphere and represents our first view of Jupiter’s poles (the north pole).

The images this picture is based on reveal complex flow patterns, akin to cyclones in Earth’s atmosphere, and striking effects caused by the variety of clouds at different altitudes, sometimes casting shadows on layers of clouds below.

I chose this image for its beauty as well as the surprise it produced: the parts of the planet near its north pole look very different to the parts we had previously seen closer to the equator. By looking down on the poles of Jupiter, Juno showed us a different view of a familiar planet.

2. The Eagle Nebula

(G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy)

Astronomers can obtain unique information by building telescopes which are sensitive to light of “colors” beyond those our eyes can see. The familiar rainbow of colors is only a tiny fraction of what physicists call the electromagnetic spectrum.

Beyond red is the infrared, which carries less energy than optical light. An infrared camera can see objects too cool to be detectable by the human eye. In space, it can also see through dust, which otherwise completely obscures our view.

 

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the largest infrared observatory ever launched. Until now, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory has been the largest. The next image I’ve chosen is Herschel view of star formation in the Eagle Nebula, also known as M16.

A nebula is a cloud of gas in space. The Eagle Nebula is 6,500 light-years away from Earth, which is quite close by astronomical standards. This nebula is a site of vigorous star formation.

A close-up view of a feature near the center of this image has been called the “Pillars of Creation”. Appearing a bit like a thumb and forefinger pointing upwards and slightly to the left, these pillars protrude into a cavity in a giant cloud of molecular gas and dust. The cavity is being swept out by winds emanating from energetic new stars which have recently formed deeper within the cloud.

3. The Galactic Center

(NASA, ESA, and Q.D. Wang; NASA, JPL, and S. Stolovy)

This image looks deeper into space to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. It also uses infrared light, this time combining data from two NASA telescopes, Hubble and Spitzer.

The bright white region in the lower right of the image is the very center of our Galaxy. It contains a massive black hole called Sagittarius A*, a cluster of stars and the remains of a massive star which exploded as a supernova about 10,000 years ago.

Other star clusters are visible too. There’s the Quintuplet cluster in the lower left of the image within a bubble where the stars’ winds have cleared the local gas and dust. In the upper left there’s a cluster called the Arches, which was named for the illuminated arcs of gas which extend above it and out of the image. These two clusters include some of the most massive stars known.

4. Abell 370

(NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team/STScI)

On much larger scales than individual galaxies, the universe is structured as a web of filaments (long connected strands) of dark matter. Some of the most dramatic visible objects are clusters of galaxies which form at the intersection of filaments.

If we look at galaxy clusters nearby (relatively speaking, of course), we can see dramatic proof that Einstein was right when he asserted that mass curves space. One of the prettiest examples which reveals this warping of space can be seen in Hubble’s image of Abell 370, released in 2017.

 

Abell 370 is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies about 5 billion light-years away from us. In the picture, you can see elongated arcs of light. These are the magnified and distorted images of far more distant galaxies.

The mass of the cluster distorts spacetime and bends the light from the more distant objects, magnifying them and in some cases creating multiple images of the same distant galaxy. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing because the warped spacetime acts like an optical lens.

The most prominent of these magnified images is the thickest bright arc above and to the left of the center of the picture. Called “the Dragon”, this arc consists of two images of the same distant galaxy at its head and tail. Overlapping images of several other distant galaxies comprise the arc of the dragon’s body.

These gravitationally magnified images are useful to astronomers because the magnification reveals more detail of the distant lensed object than would otherwise be seen. In this case, the lensed galaxy’s population of stars can be examined in detail.

5. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field

(NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith/STScI and the HUDF Team)

In an inspired idea, astronomers decided to point Hubble at a blank patch of sky for several days to discover what extremely distant objects might be seen at the edge of the observable universe.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field contains nearly 10,000 objects, almost all of which are very distant galaxies. The light from some of these galaxies has been traveling for over 13 billion years, since the universe was only about half a billion years old.

 

Some of these objects are among the oldest and most distant known. Here we’re seeing light from ancient stars whose local contemporaries have long since been extinguished.

The oldest galaxies formed during the epoch of reionization, when the tenuous gas in the universe first became bathed in starlight which was capable of separating electrons from hydrogen. This was the last major change in properties of the universe as a whole.

The fact that light carries so much information, allowing us to piece together the history of the universe, is remarkable. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope will give us some vastly improved infrared images, and will inevitably raise new questions to challenge future generations of scientists.

Carole Haswell, Professor of Astrophysics, The Open University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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