JWST tagged posts

JWST captures its first direct images of carbon dioxide outside solar system

HR 8799
The clearest look yet in the infrared at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. Colors are applied to filters from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). A star symbol marks the location of the host star HR 8799, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph. In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to the 4.6 micron light.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI)

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system in HR8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years away that has long been a key target for planet formation studies.

The observations provide strong evidence that the system’s four giant planets ...

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Signs of alien life may be hiding in these gases

Hycean planet illustration
Artist’s illustration of a Hycean world, where methyl halide gases would be detectable in the atmosphere. (Pablo Carlos Budassi)

-Advancing the search for weird life on weird planets

Scientists have identified a promising new way to detect life on faraway planets, hinging on worlds that look nothing like Earth and gases rarely considered in the search for extraterrestrials.

In a new Astrophysical Journal Letters paper, researchers from the University of California, Riverside, describe these gases, which could be detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – with the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST.

Called methyl halides, the gases comprise a methyl group, which bears a carbon and three hydrogen atoms, attached to a halogen atom such as chlo...

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Phoenix galaxy cluster caught in the act of extreme cooling

Study reveals the Phoenix galaxy cluster in the act of extreme cooling
The core of the Phoenix cluster is shown across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. The bright purples represent X-rays produced by the hot gas, and the dashed purple outlines show regions where this hot gas has been pushed away by the radio jets from the supermassive black hole. The radio jets themselves are shown in red colors. The blues and yellows represent visible light emitted by cool gas and stars. The green contours show the “warm” gas that is in the process of cooling, newly measured in the MIT study with JWST. Credit: NASA

The core of a massive cluster of galaxies appears to be pumping out far more stars than it should. Now researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a key ingredient within the cluster that explains the core’s prolific starburst.

In a new study publis...

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First-ever Detection of a Mid-Infrared Flare in SagittariusA*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

Using the MIRI instrument onboard the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of scientists made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive blackhole at the heart of the Milky Way. In simultaneous radio observations, the team found a radio counterpart of the flare lagging behind in time. The paper is published on the arXiv preprint server.

Scientists have been actively observing Sagittarius A* (Sgr A)—a supermassive black hole roughly 4 million times the mass of the sun— since the early 1990s. Sgr A regularly exhibits flares that can be observed in multiple wavelengths, allowing scientists to see different views of the same flare and better understand how it emits light and how the emission is generated...

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