James Webb Space Telescope Archives

July 16, 2024July 16, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Images From Webb Reveal Jupiter's Complex Atmosphere

New observations of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter have revealed that the planet’s atmosphere above and around the infamous storm is surprisingly interesting and active. Credit: ESA

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has accomplished some spectacular feats since it began operations in 2021. Thanks to its sensitivity in the near- and mid-infrared wavelengths, it can take detailed images of cooler objects and reveal things that would otherwise go unnoticed. This includes the iconic image Webb took of Jupiter in August 2022, which showed the planet’s atmospheric features (including its polar aurorae and Great Red Spot) in a new light. Using Webb, a team of European astronomers recently observed the region above the Great Red Spot and discovered previously unseen features.

June 27, 2024June 27, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Sees Globular Clusters Forming in the Early Universe

The Cosmic Gems arc as observed by the JWST. The clusters have the attributes of gravitationally-bound proto-Globular Clusters. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration.

Picture the Universe’s ancient beginnings. In the vast darkness, light was emitted from a particular galaxy only 460 million years after the Big Bang. On the way, the light was shifted into the infrared and magnified by a massive gravitational lens before finally reaching the James Webb Space Telescope.

The galaxy is called the Cosmic Gems arc, and it held some surprises for astronomers.

June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Fly Through the Pillars of Creation in this New Visualisation Made from Webb and Hubble Data

Webb and Hubble images of the Pillars of Creation

I remember April 1995 very well. It was the month that the stunning and iconic image that has been called ‘Pillars of Creation’ was released. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope but now the James Webb Telescope is getting in on the act. Webb snapped images of the Eagle Nebula (home to the ‘pillars’) early on but now astronomers have combined the data form Hubble and Webb to create an amazing 3D animation flight through the nebula.

June 21, 2024June 21, 2024 by Evan Gough

The JWST Peers into the Heart of Star Formation

In this image of the Serpens Nebula from the Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows within one small region (the top left corner). In the Webb image, these jets are identified by bright red clumpy streaks, which are shockwaves caused when the jet hits the surrounding gas and dust. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute)

The James Webb Space Telescope has unlocked another achievement. This time, the dynamic telescope has peered into the heart of a nearby star-forming region and imaged something astronomers have longed to see: aligned bipolar jets.

June 20, 2024June 20, 2024 by Matt Williams

Matched Twin Stars are Firing Their Jets Into Space Together

This artist’s concept shows two young stars nearing the end of their formation. Encircling the stars are disks of leftover gas and dust from which planets may form. Jets of gas shoot away from the stars’ north and south poles. Credit: NASA

Since it began operating in 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed some surprising things about the Universe. The latest came when a team of researchers used Webb‘s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to observe Rho Ophiuchi, the closest star-forming nebula to Earth, about 400 light-years away. While at least five telescopes have studied the region since the 1970s, Webb’s unprecedented resolution and specialized instruments revealed what was happening at the heart of this nebula.

For starters, while observing what was thought to be a single star (WL 20S), the team realized they were observing a pair of young stars that formed 2 to 4 million years ago. The MIRI data also revealed that the twin stars have matching jets of hot gas (aka stellar jets) emanating from their north and south poles into space. The discovery was presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (224 AAS) on June 12th. Thanks to additional observations made by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the team was surprised to notice large clouds of dust and gas encircling both stars.

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Evan Gough

Almost a Third of Early Galaxies Were Already Spirals

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. New JWST observations of the early Universe are upending our understanding of galaxy evolution. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

In the years before the JWST’s launch, astronomers’ efforts to understand the early Universe were stymied by a stubborn obstacle: the light from the early Universe was red-shifted to an extreme degree. The JWST was built with extreme redshifts in mind, and one of its goals was to study Galaxy Assembly.

Once the JWST activated its segmented, beryllium eye, the Universe’s most ancient, red-shifted light became visible.

June 5, 2024June 5, 2024 by Evan Gough

The JWST is Re-Writing Astronomy Textbooks

The first JWST Deep Field Image, showing large distant galaxies. The telescope's observations are revealing the previously unseen and are forcing a re-write of astronomy textbooks. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched at the end of 2021, we expected stunning images and illuminating scientific results. So far, the powerful space telescope has lived up to our expectations. The JWST has shown us things about the early Universe we never anticipated.

Some of those results are forcing a rewrite of astronomy textbooks.

May 26, 2024May 26, 2024 by Matt Williams

Galaxies in the Early Universe Preferred their Food Cold

This illustration shows a galaxy forming only a few hundred million years after the big bang, when gas was a mix of transparent and opaque during the Era of Reionization. Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows that cold gas is falling onto these galaxies. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

One of the main objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is to study the early Universe by using its powerful infrared optics to spot the first galaxies while they were still forming. Using Webb data, a team led by the Cosmic Dawn Center in Denmark pinpointed three galaxies that appear to have been actively forming just 400 to 600 million years after the Big Bang. This places them within the Era of Reionization, when the Universe was permeated by opaque clouds of neutral hydrogen that were slowly heated and ionized by the first stars and galaxies.

This process caused the Universe to become transparent roughly 1 billion years after the Big Bang and (therefore) visible to astronomers today. When the team consulted the data obtained by Webb, they observed that these galaxies were surrounded by an unusual amount of dense gas composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, which likely became fuel for further galactic growth. These findings already reveal valuable information about the formation of early galaxies and show how Webb is exceeding its mission objectives.

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Webb Finds Deep Space Alcohol and Chemicals in Newly Forming Planetary

This image was taken by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) of a region parallel to the massive protostar known as IRAS23385. IRAS 2A and IRAS23385 (not visible in this image) were targets for a recent research effort by an international team of astronomers that used Webb to discover that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed. With MIRI’s unprecedented spectral resolution and sensitivity, the JOYS+ (James Webb Observations of Young ProtoStars) programme individually identified organic molecules that have been confirmed to be present in interstellar ices. This includes the robust detection of acetaldehyde, ethanol, methyl formate, and likely acetic acid, in the solid phase. [Image description: A region of a molecular cloud. The cloud is dense and bright close to the top of the image, like rolling clouds, and grows darker and more wispy towards the bottom and in the top corner. One bright star, and several dimmer stars, are visible as light spots among the clouds. The image is a single exposure which has been assigned an orange colour for visibility.]

Since its launch in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made some amazing discoveries. Recent observations have found a number of key ingredients required for life in young proto-stars where planetary formation is imminent. Chemicals like methane, acetic acid and ethanol have been detected in interstellar ice. Previous telescopic observations have only hinted at their presence as a warm gas. Not only have they been detected but a team of scientists have synthesised some of them in a lab.

March 26, 2024March 26, 2024 by Evan Gough

In a Distant Solar System, the JWST Sees the End of Planet Formation

This artist's illustration shows what gas leaving a planet-forming disk might look like around the T Tauri star T. Cha. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser CC BY

Every time a star forms, it represents an explosion of possibilities. Not for the star itself; its fate is governed by its mass. The possibilities it signifies are in the planets that form around it. Will some be rocky? Will they be in the habitable zone? Will there be life on any of the planets one day?

There’s a point in every solar system’s development when it can no longer form planets. No more planets can form because there’s no more gas and dust available, and the expanding planetary possibilities are truncated. But the total mass of a solar system’s planets never adds up to the total mass of gas and dust available around the young star.

What happens to the mass, and why can’t more planets form?