James Webb Space Telescope tagged posts

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have captured one of the clearest views yet of how an early supermassive black hole may grow within a network of young galaxies. The compact active galaxy, seen just a billion years after the Big Bang, lies beside a 12,000-parsec-long filament containing multiple galaxies that are expected to merge within a few hundred million years.

The findings, posted to the arXiv preprint server on July 6, suggest astronomers may be witnessing a short-lived phase in the evolution of rapidly growing black holes while also shedding light on how the first massive galaxies assembled in the early universe.

Too big for its galaxy
Since JWST began operating, astronomers have found a population of compact, actively feeding black holes in galaxies from ...

Astronomers have spotted many “red and dead” galaxies in the early universe. These are massive systems that stopped forming stars surprisingly early in cosmic history. Now, they may have found evidence of one in the act of becoming dead: a massive galaxy being stripped of its starforming gas just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang...

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to catch an extraordinary glimpse of a massive galaxy taking shape in the early universe. They identified a compact group of at least six galaxies that are likely to merge into a single enormous system. At the heart of this cosmic construction site lies a growing supermassive black hole.

The international study was led by astronomers at Leiden University and the University of Oxford. The findings have been published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The system observed, TGSSJ1530+1049, lies more than 12 billion light-years away. We are seeing it as it was when the universe was only about 1.5 billion years old...

Astronomers have spotted something surprising in the far outer Solar System—a faint, short-lived atmosphere clinging to a tiny icy world that shouldn’t be able to hold one at all. The object, called 2002XV93, is far smaller than Pluto, yet observations during a rare stellar alignment revealed its presence through a subtle dimming of starlight. Even more puzzling, calculations suggest this atmosphere should vanish within about 1,000 years unless it’s constantly being replenished.

A group of professional and amateur astronomers in Japan has uncovered evidence that a small, distant object in the outer Solar System is surrounded by a thin atmosp...