James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) tagged posts

Hydrogen Peroxide found on Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede in Higher Latitudes

Hydrogen peroxide found on Jupiter's moon Ganymede only in higher latitudes
Maps of Ganymede’s 3.5 μm H2O2 absorption compared to those of the 3.1 μm Fresnel peaks of water ice and corresponding projections of the U.S. Geological Survey VoyagerGalileo imaging mosaic. H2O2 appears constrained to the upper latitudes, particularly on the leading hemisphere, which exhibits sharp boundaries at approximately ±30° to 35° latitude. These boundaries are roughly coincident with the onset of Ganymede’s polar frost caps and with the latitudes at which most of the impinging Jovian magnetospheric particles can access the surface. Maps of the Fresnel reflection peak of water ice, which generally track the distribution of ice deduced from shorter-wavelength water bands, also show the areas of greatest H2O2 on the leading hemisphere to be enriched in water ice...
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Study of Small Magellanic Cloud suggests Planets could have Formed during ‘Cosmic Noon’

Study of Small Magellanic Cloud suggests planets could have formed during 'cosmic noon'
NIRCam mosaics of NGC 346. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-01945-7

An international team of space scientists has found evidence suggesting that planets could have formed during the so-called “cosmic noon.” In their study, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study a part of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) to learn more about planet development around young stars.

For many years, astronomers have been studying planet creation and the likelihood of the existence of planets similar to Earth. But it is still not clear how planets could have could come to exist in the early universe when most, if not all of the stars, were small...

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New Evidence for the Nature of Matter from Ancient Galaxies in the Early Universe

New evidence for the nature of matter from ancient galaxies in the early universe
Distribution of primordial matter in cosmological models with hot dark matter (WDM, left) and cold dark matter. Credit: CDM, destra

Astrophysicists in Italy have shed new light on the nature of matter from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detection of galaxies from 13 billion years ago and novel state-of-the-art numerical simulations of the first galaxies. The study adds another piece to the puzzle of the nature of matter in the universe.

While the commonly accepted paradigm of structure formation is based on non-relativistic matter that interacts only gravitationally, that is “cold” dark matter, alternative possibilities advocated to solve small-scale problems of the standard scenario rely on the hypothesis that dark matter is made of warm particles that possess a small, non-n...

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Astronomers discover Metal-Rich Galaxies in Early Universe

Astronomers discover metal-rich galaxy in early universe
The moment 0 map and spectrum snippets of the strong emission lines. For each strong line(s), the lens-subtracted, continuum-subtracted moment 0 map is displayed in the first row, with the same marked regions as in Figure 1. The spectrum snippets are shown in the second row, integrated over the three regions. The spectra are offset vertically to aid vision, with the zero baseline indicated by a thin black line. The green dashed line indicates the Gaussian fit to the line or line associations plus the linear fit to the local continuum. The labeling style and color of the spectrum are the same as Figure 1. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acb59c

While analyzing data from the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by NASA’s James Webb Space...

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