James Webb Space Telescope

[Dos_Box]

I'd be interested to know how usage of space telescopes is administered. The logistics of the thing must be mega. I'm guessing that it's just a bit more sophisticated than the kinds of Google Forms/Sharepoint lists that we're all accustomed to having to throw together in schools. An entire planet's worth of scientists all needing to use the same one thing, perhaps at a time that they won't know until they get to use it. How do you get it pointed at what you want it pointed at?

 

If you watch Dr Becky's YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYNbYGl89UUowy8oXkipC-Q - she goes into how you get 'time' on the James Webb in some of them.

Essentially, you apply. You send in your proposal and the time you require and, should it meet the criteria, it will be scheduled in.

I do recall that she said that this could take many years though as demand is high. The JW is working almost full time now and has been mentioned, it can do in hours what took the Hubble days. Admittedly, many of the projects being run will not prodce pretty pictures, but raw data on whatever is being observed.

I'm still not sure if you have to pay to use it or, as members of the countries/organisations who helped to fund it, you get a free pass. I can't imagine all of the back-end systems and people being used to keep it running would be cheap to though.

[Brimstone]

This Horizon doc was really good....https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00197px/horizon-2022-super-telescope-mission-to-the-edge-of-the-universe

[6Foot2]

Link: ‘Never seen Jupiter like this’: James Webb telescope shows incredible view of planet | James Webb space telescope | The Guardian

 

 

The world’s newest and biggest space telescope is showing Jupiter as never before, auroras and all.

 

Scientists released the shots Monday of the solar system’s biggest planet.

 

The James Webb space telescope took the photos in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze.

 

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow Earth, stands out brightly alongside countless smaller storms. One wide-field picture is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a glittering background of galaxies.

 

“We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all quite incredible,” planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. She helped lead the observation. “We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest.”

 

The infrared images were artificially colored in blue, white, green, yellow and orange, according to the US-French research team, to make the features stand out.

 

Nasa and the European Space Agency’s $10bn successor to the Hubble space telescope rocketed away at the end of last year and has been observing the cosmos in the infrared since summer. Scientists hope to behold the dawn of the universe with Webb, peering all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7bn years ago.

 

The observatory is positioned 1m miles (1.6m km) from Earth.

[6Foot2]

 

🤩

[6Foot2]

Looking forward to exoplanet atmospheres, who knows in under 10 years we might get confirmation that oxygen has been found in an old exoplanet, basically proof that life exists on another planet. I wonder how news like that would change the world, I wonder if we'd start planning a mission there? (if it's 40ly away, a small laser-sail cubesat may get there in a few hundred years... such a shame space is so BIG)

 

Link: NASA’s Webb Detects Carbon Dioxide in Exoplanet Atmosphere | NASA

 

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding, accepted for publication in Nature, offers evidence that in the future Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.

 

WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant with a mass roughly one-quarter that of Jupiter (about the same as Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter. Its extreme puffiness is related in part to its high temperature (about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or 900 degrees Celsius). Unlike the cooler, more compact gas giants in our solar system, WASP-39 b orbits very close to its star – only about one-eighth the distance between the Sun and Mercury – completing one circuit in just over four Earth-days. The planet’s discovery, reported in 2011, was made based on ground-based detections of the subtle, periodic dimming of light from its host star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star.

 

Previous observations from other telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, revealed the presence of water vapor, sodium, and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere. Webb’s unmatched infrared sensitivity has now confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on this planet as well.

 

First Clear Detection of Carbon Dioxide

 

The research team used Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) for its observations of WASP-39b. In the resulting spectrum of the exoplanet’s atmosphere, a small hill between 4.1 and 4.6 microns presents the first clear, detailed evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside the solar system.

 

"As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” said Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team, which undertook this investigation. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences.”

 

No observatory has ever measured such subtle differences in brightness of so many individual colors across the 3 to 5.5-micron range in an exoplanet transmission spectrum before. Access to this part of the spectrum is crucial for measuring abundances of gases like water and methane, as well as carbon dioxide, which are thought to exist in many different types of exoplanets.

 

“Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets,” said Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who leads the team.

 

Understanding the composition of a planet’s atmosphere is important because it tells us something about the origin of the planet and how it evolved. “Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” said Mike Line of Arizona State University, another member of this research team. “By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet. In the coming decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insight into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our own solar system.”...

[6Foot2]

Link: [James] Webb Images - 2022 | Flickr [NASA Album. 10 images at the time of posting]

[Brax]

Incredible images, shame the moon mission had to be aborted!

[6Foot2]

Another Hubble vs Webb comparison:

 

Link: Webb’s Icy Instrument Reveals Complex Structures | ESA/Webb

 

 

"Drag handle to reveal images" (click link for interactive content)

 

This spectacular image features the spiral galaxy IC 5332, shown here in unprecedented detail thanks to observations from the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), which is mounted on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. IC 5332 lies over 29 million light-years from Earth, and has a diameter of roughly 66 000 light-years, making it about a third smaller than the Milky Way. It is notable for being almost perfectly face-on with respect to Earth, allowing us to admire the symmetrical sweep of its spiral arms.

 

MIRI is the only Webb instrument that is sensitive to the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (specifically in the 5 µm – 28 µm wavelength range); Webb’s other instruments all operate in the near-infrared. One of MIRI’s most remarkable features is that it operates 33 °C below the rest of the observatory at the frosty temperature of –266 °C. That means that MIRI operates in an environment only 7 °C warmer than absolute zero, which is the lowest possible temperature according to the laws of thermodynamics. MIRI requires this frigid environment in order for its highly specialised detectors to function correctly, and it has a dedicated active cooling system to ensure that its detectors are kept at the correct temperature.

 

It is worth noting just how challenging it is to obtain observations in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The mid-infrared is incredibly difficult to observe from Earth as much of it is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, and heat from Earth’s atmosphere further complicates things. Hubble could not observe the mid-infrared region as its mirrors were not cool enough, meaning that infrared radiation from the mirrors themselves would have dominated any attempted observations. The extra effort made to ensure that MIRI’s detectors had the freezing environment necessary to operate properly is evident in this stunning image.

 

This extravagantly detailed mid-infrared image is juxtaposed here with a beautiful ultraviolet and visible-light image of the same galaxy, created using data collected by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Some differences are immediately obvious. The Hubble image shows dark regions that seem to separate the spiral arms, whereas the Webb image shows more of a continual tangle of structures that echo the spiral arms’ shape. This difference is due to the presence of dusty regions in the galaxy. Ultraviolet and visible light are far more prone to being scattered by interstellar dust than infrared light. Therefore dusty regions can be identified easily in the Hubble image as the darker regions that much of the galaxy’s ultraviolet and visible light has not been able to travel through. Those same dusty regions are no longer dark in the Webb image, however, as the mid-infrared light from the galaxy has been able to pass through them. Different stars are visible in the two images, which can be explained because certain stars shine brighter in the ultraviolet, visible and infrared regimes respectively. The images complement one another in a remarkable way, each telling us more about IC 5332’s structure and composition.

 

MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.

[6Foot2]

 

An amateur astronomer removed the stars from the JWT image. This is the result:

 

[Dos_Box]

That is a gorgeous pic!

[Brax]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]66793[/ATTACH]

 

An amateur astronomer removed the stars from the JWT image. This is the result:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]66794[/ATTACH]

Beautiful! And the amount of stars you can see when you really look at the Webb image is simply mind boggling.

[Dos_Box]

You can download the hi-res images for the Pillars of Creation here - https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM

[6Foot2]

Link:

[NASA Webb Telescope Picture Tweet]

 

Uranus has never looked better. Really...

 

 

😏

[6Foot2]

Link: James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

 

JWST caught a question mark looking galaxy in the background of the recent Herbig-Haro 46/47 NIRCam image. This can be because of some gravitational lensing or even due to galaxy collisions.

 

[Brax]

Link: James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

 

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69601[/ATTACH]

It's the aliens

[Dos_Box]

It's the aliens

 

I disagree. It's The Riddler, and he's up to something!

[LeMarchand]

I reckon most of the people here know what the answer is.

[6Foot2]

I reckon most of the people here know what the answer is.

 

42, naturally.

 

.

[6Foot2]

Link: NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies - NASA Science

 

 

It’s oh-so-easy to be absolutely mesmerized by these spiral galaxies. Follow their clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to their centers, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes – active supermassive black holes. Only NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can deliver highly detailed scenes of nearby galaxies in a combination of near- and mid-infrared light – and a set of these images was publicly released today ...

 

.. These Webb images are part of a large, long-standing project, the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide. Before Webb took these images, PHANGS was already brimming with data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, including observations in ultraviolet, visible, and radio light. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared contributions have provided several new puzzle pieces ...

[Brax]

Link: NASA’s Webb Depicts Staggering Structure in 19 Nearby Spiral Galaxies - NASA Science

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]70755[/ATTACH]

Breathtaking pictures and also mind boggling. My dream is to work at NASA, maybe one day . Also looking forward to the crew9 launch later this year, exciting times!

[6Foot2]

 

Link: Saturn (NIRCam) | Webb

 

On June 25, 2023, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope turned to famed ringed world Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the planet. The initial imagery from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) is already fascinating researchers.

 

Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the Webb image...