JWST Archives

July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Why is JWST Having So Much Trouble with the TRAPPIST-1 System?

A new step-by-step roadmap describes how to improve the efficiency of data gathering with the JWST to benefit the astronomy community at large. “Our hope now is that a large-scale community effort guided by the roadmap can be initiated to yield deliverables at a timely pace,” says MIT Associate Professor Julien de Wit. Credits:Image components courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched it came with a fanfare expecting amazing things, much like the Hubble Space Telescope. One of JWST’s most anticipated target was TRAPPIST-1. This inconspicuous star is host to seven Earth-sized planets, with at least three in the habitable zone. The two inner planets are airless worlds but so far there has been no word of the third planet, the first in the habitable zone. The question is why and what makes it so tricky to observe?

July 17, 2024July 17, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Webb Measures the Weather on a Tidally Locked Exoplanet

Exploring exoplanet atmospheres in more detail was one task that planetary scientists anticipated during the long wait while the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was in development. Now, their patience is finally paying off. News about discoveries of exoplanet atmosphere using data from JWST seems to be coming from one research group or another almost every week, and this week is no exception. A paper published in Nature by authors from a few dozen institutions describes the atmospheric differences between the “morning” and “evening” sides of a tidally locked planet for the first time.

July 4, 2024July 4, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Sees a Star in the Midst of Formation

In this JWST image, a young protostar is growing larger and emitting jets of material from inside its molecular cloud. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Wherever the JWST looks in space, matter and energy are interacting in spectacular displays. The Webb reveals more detail in these interactions than any other telescope because it can see through dense gas and dust that cloak many objects.

In a new image, the JWST spots a young protostar only 100,000 years old.

May 2, 2024May 2, 2024 by Evan Gough

Is the JWST Now an Interplanetary Meteorologist?

This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

The JWST keeps one-upping itself. In the telescope’s latest act of outdoing itself, it examined a distant exoplanet to map its weather. The forecast?

An unending, blistering inferno driven by ceaseless supersonic winds.

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets

This artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet embedded in the disk of dust and gas in the ring of dust around a young star. A University of Michigan study aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at a protoplanetary disk surrounding a protostar called SAO 206462, hoping to find a gas giant planet in the act of forming. Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada

We can’t understand what we can’t clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how planets form. Planet formation happens inside a thick, obscuring disk of gas and dust. But when it comes to seeing through that dust to where nascent planets begin to take shape, astronomers have a powerful new tool: the James Webb Space Telescope.

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Evan Gough

Another Hycean Planet Found? TOI-270 d

Artist's impression of the surface of a hycean world. Hycean worlds are still hypothetical, and have large oceans and thick hydrogen-rich atmospheres that trap heat. They could be habitable even if they're outside the traditional habitable zone. Credit: University of Cambridge

Hycean planets may be able to host life even though they’re outside what scientists consider the regular habitable zone. Their thick atmospheres can trap enough heat to keep the oceans warm even though they’re not close to their stars.

Astronomers have found another one of these potential hycean worlds named TOI-270 d.

March 7, 2024March 8, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

This Galaxy Was Already Dead When the Universe Was Only 700 Million Years Old

False-color JWST image of a small fraction of the GOODS South field, with the galaxy JADES-GS-z7-01-QU highlighted Credit: JADES Collaboration

When a galaxy runs out of gas and dust, the process of star birth stops. That takes billions of years. But, there’s a galaxy out there that was already dead when the Universe was only 700 million years old. What happened to it?

February 20, 2024February 20, 2024 by Evan Gough

JWST Sees a Milky Way-Like Galaxy Coming Together in the Early Universe

The ancient Firefly Sparkle galaxy is precursor to galaxies like the Milky Way. The JWST found ten separate clusters in the galaxy that show how the galaxy is growing through mergers. Image Credit: Mowla et al. 2024.

The gigantic galaxies we see in the Universe today, including our own Milky Way galaxy, started out far smaller. Mergers throughout the Universe’s 13.7 billion years gradually assembled today’s massive galaxies. But they may have begun as mere star clusters.

In an effort to understand the earliest galaxies, the JWST has examined their ancient light for clues as to how they became so massive.

December 20, 2023December 20, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A New View of Uranus’ North Pole from JWST

One cool thing about Uranus is that its orientation, compared to the rest of the solar system, allows a unique perspective of the planet from our home planet. It is tilted at 98° compared to the rest of the ecliptic plane. So, when viewed from Earth, we can see its North Pole and its rings in some exceptional cases. That perspective is fully displayed in an image of Uranus recently released by the European Space Agency (ESA) and captured using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

December 19, 2023December 19, 2023 by Evan Gough

Can Webb Find the First Stars in the Universe?

The Universe’s very first stars had an important job. They formed from the primordial elements created by the Big Bang, so they contained no metals. It was up to them to synthesize the first metals and spread them out into the nearby Universe.

The JWST has made some progress in finding the Universe’s earliest galaxies. Can it have the same success when searching for the first stars?