JWST tagged posts

Surprise finding suggests ‘Water Worlds’ are more Common than we thought

view of one hemisphere of Europa, a moon made of pale rock with orange streaks across surface
A new study suggests that many more planets in distant solar systems have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock. The catch? It’s probably imbedded underground, as in Jupiter’s moon Europa, above.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Analysis finds evidence for many exoplanets made of water and rock around small stars. A new study suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought–as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

Water is the one thing all life on Earth needs, and the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what keeps our planet’s climate stabl...

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Out with a Bang: Explosive Neutron Star Merger captured for the first time in Millimeter Light

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — an international observatory co-operated by the US National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) — have for the first time recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion caused by the merger of a neutron star with another star. The team also confirmed this flash of light to be one of the most energetic short-duration gamma-ray bursts ever observed, leaving behind one of the most luminous afterglows on record. The results of the research will be published in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the brightest and most energetic explosions in the Universe, capable of emi...

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Hubble Captures Largest Near-Infrared Image to find Universe’s Rarest Galaxies

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Galaxies from the last 10 billion years witnessed in the 3D-DASH program, created using 3D-DASH/F160W and ACS-COSMOS/F814W imaging (image by Lamiya Mowla)

An international team of scientists today released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated. Named 3D-DASH, this high-resolution survey will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission.

A preprint of the paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal is available on arXiv.

“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Teles...

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Neptune is Cooler than we thought: Study reveals unexpected Changes in Atmospheric Temperatures

Observed changes in Neptune’s thermal-infrared brightness, a measure of temperature in Neptune’s atmosphere. The plot shows the relative change in the thermal-infrared brightness from Neptune’s stratosphere with time for all existing images taken by ground-based telescopes. Brighter images are interpreted as warmer. Corresponding thermal-infrared images (top) at wavelengths of ~12 µm show Neptune’s appearance in 2006, 2009, 2018 (observed by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s VISIR instrument), and 2020 (observed by Subaru’s COMICS instrument). The south pole appears to have become dramatically warmer in just the past few years. Credit: Michael Roman/NASA/JPL/Voyager-ISS/Justin Cowart

New research led by space scientists at the University of Leice...

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