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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has enabled another long-sought scientific breakthrough, this time for solar system scientists studying the origins of Earth’s abundant water. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers have confirmed gas – specifically water vapor – around a comet in the main asteroid belt for the first time, indicating that water ice from the primordial solar system can be preserved in that region. However, the successful detection of water comes with a new puzzle: unlike other comets, Comet 238P/Read had no detectable carbon dioxide.

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This view of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument, is studded by the galaxy’s massive population of stars, most dense along its bright central bar, along with burning red clouds of gas illuminated by young stars within. This near-infrared image of the galaxy is filled by the enormous gathering of older stars which make up the core of NGC 5068. The keen vision of NIRCam allows astronomers to peer through the galaxy’s gas and dust to closely examine its stars. Dense and bright clouds of dust lie along the path of the spiral arms: These are H II regions, collections of hydrogen gas where new stars are forming. The young, energetic stars ionize the hydrogen around them, creating this glow represented in red.

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team

 

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Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a thread-like arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the nearby universe. 

This deep galaxy field from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows an arrangement of 10 distant galaxies marked by eight white circles in a diagonal, thread-like line. (Two of the circles contain more than one galaxy.) This 3 million light-year-long filament is anchored by a very distant and luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the middle of the cluster of three circles on the right side of the image. Its brightness outshines its host galaxy. The 10 marked galaxies existed just 830 million years after the big bang.

 

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Webb found complex organic molecules similar to smoke or smog in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth. This sets a new record for the most distant detection of these big, complicated molecules: bit.ly/43M4YEG

The distant galaxy in question lies behind a much closer foreground galaxy. The gravity of the foreground galaxy is so great that it distorts and magnifies the light of the galaxy behind it, making it easier to see.

In space, where there’s smoke, there are stars — usually. But this galaxy might change astronomers’ long-held belief: These “smoky molecules” were abundant in some areas with little star formation, or were scarce in some areas with active star birth.

Due to how far light from this galaxy had to travel, we’re seeing this galaxy as it was back when the universe was < 1.5 billion years old. The discovery suggests that complex chemistry began occurring in the universe much earlier than we thought.

 

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “antics” of a pair of actively forming young stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in high-resolution near-infrared light. To find them, trace the bright pink and red diffraction spikes until you hit the center: The stars are within the orange-white splotch. They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars. 

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Let’s celebrate one year of Webb science by taking a brand-new look at Sun-like stars being born in this detailed close-up of Rho Ophiuchi, the closest-star-forming region to Earth. Webb spotted around 50 young stars, many close in mass to our star, giving us a glimpse into the early life of the Sun. Dark, dense dust cocoons still-forming protostars, while an emerging stellar newborn (top center) shoots out two huge jets of molecular hydrogen.

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The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 dominates this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. This Milky Way-sized galaxy lies about 120 million light-years away in the constellation Vela, and is a denizen of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster.

NGC 3256 may seem peaceful, a swirl of tightly entwined spiral arms set in a hazy cloud of light, but this image shows the aftermath of an ancient cosmic clash. This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two equally massive spiral galaxies which astronomers estimate to have met around 500 million years ago. The tumultuous past of NGC 3256 is captured in the long tendrils of shining dust and stars which extend outwards from the main body of the galaxy. The striking red and orange regions spread across the galaxy contain young stars created in the merger that are irradiating small dust grains, which then emit infrared light that is captured in astonishing detail by Webb’s instruments. Further out, there are extended tidal features, which are mostly stars pulled out of the galaxies when they collided.

If you were asked to picture a galaxy collision, you might picture stars careening into one another with catastrophically explosive results. In reality, the spaces between the stars in a galaxy are vast; when galaxies collide, their clouds of stars pass through one another and mingle like two clouds of smoke. The gas and dust in colliding galaxies does interact, however, and with spectacular results. The galactic collision that created NGC 3256 triggered a luminous burst of star formation that can be seen in the brightest portions of this image. These infant stars shine most brightly at infrared wavelengths, light which can penetrate through obscuring dust in the galaxy, and which makes the stars perfect subjects for Webb.

 

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A background object in the latest image from JWST is certainly puzzling – and not just metaphorically. It is shaped like a giant question mark. The object is most likely a distant galaxy interacting, resulting in a shape that reminds us of a question mark.

The object is a literal smudge below the focus of the picture: Herbig-Haro 46/47. This is a pair of young stars that have been studied for decades. They are located at the edge of a dark nebula, so when observed with visible light they might not appear as grandiose. But JWST's infrared eye was able to peer through those layers, revealing so much more about the environment of these two baby stars.

 

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So what do they have planned for JWST in its second year?

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“There is so much more exoplanet stuff coming. That was the striking thing about preparing for this is that so many people have results but aren't quite ready to share yet. They are on the way though,” hinted Dr Elisabeth Matthews, who is from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and works on exoplanets. 

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New image of the Ring Nebula:

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Webb’s getting into the Halloween spirit early. The telescope captured this spectral view of star-forming region NGC 346 in mid-infrared light. The blue tendrils represent silicates and sooty chemical molecules, while the red glow represents warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars at the heart of the region. This area is also abundant with baby stars still embedded in their dusty cocoons.

NGC 346 is part of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. 

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One of the brightest nebulae in the night sky is Messier 42, the Orion Nebula, located south of Orion’s belt. At its core is the young Trapezium Cluster of stars, the most massive of which illuminate the surrounding gas and dust with their intense ultraviolet radiation fields, while protostars continue to form today in the OMC-1 molecular cloud behind.

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Webb has discovered a 3000-mi (4800-km) wide jet stream over Jupiter’s equator, above the main cloud decks. This newly discovered Jovian jet stream travels at 320 miles per hour, 2 times the winds of a Category 5 hurricane on Earth! It’s located around 25 miles (40 kilometers) in altitude, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere. Other missions have looked at Jupiter’s atmosphere and detected the lower, deeper layers, where there are gigantic storms and ammonia ice clouds. Webb’s sensitive near-infrared eye reveals new detail in the higher-altitude layers, 15-30 mi (25-50 km) above the cloud tops.

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This image contains the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays, a result that may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. This discovery was made using X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, blue).

The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. Webb data, however, reveal that UHZ1 is much farther away than Abell 2744. At some 13.2 billion light-years away, UHZ1 is seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

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8 hours ago, Elmira Telegram said:

At some 13.2 billion light-years away, UHZ1 is seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

This blows my mind. 

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It’s amazing what little we know despite knowing so much.

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