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    JWST tagged posts

    Webb Telescope spots “impossible” atmosphere on ancient super-Earth

    March 23, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist’s concept shows what a thick atmosphere above a vast magma ocean on exoplanet TOI-561 b could look like. Measurements of light captured from the planet’s dayside by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope suggest that in spite of the intense radiation it receives from its star, TOI-561 b is not a bare rock. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

    A scorching “lava world” once thought barren may actually be wrapped in a thick, mysterious atmosphere. Astronomers have uncovered surprising evidence of a thick atmosphere surrounding TOI-561 b, a scorching, fast-orbiting rocky planet once thought too extreme to hold onto any gas...

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    Astronomers may have just found one of the missing links in galaxy evolution

    February 18, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An international team of astronomers led by UMass Amherst may have just found one of the missing links in galaxy evolution
    Eighteen of the recently discovered dusty, star-forming galaxies (in red) formed almost 13 billion years ago. Credit: UMass Amherst

    A team of 48 astronomers from 14 countries, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has discovered a population of dusty, star-forming galaxies at the far edges of the universe that formed only a billion years after the Big Bang, believed to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. The galaxies may represent a snapshot in the galactic life cycle, linking recently discovered ultradistant bright galaxies formed 13.3 billion years ago with early “quiescent” (dead) galaxies that stopped forming stars about two billion years after the Big Bang.

    Challenging what we know about cosmos
    The new discovery challenges current models of the universe, making the f...

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    Study outlines how JWST and Ariel could team up on exoplanet atmospheres

    February 16, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s concept of the Ariel space telescope. Credit – ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office

    Astronomers want to collect as much data as possible using as many systems as possible. Sometimes that requires coordination between instruments. The teams that run the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the upcoming Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel) missions will have plenty of opportunity for that once both telescopes are online in the early 2030s. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from the Ariel-JWST Synergy Working Group details just how exactly the two systems can work together to better analyze exoplanets.

    JWST has already been at the center of media attention since even before its launch in late 2021...

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    Astronomers shocked by how these giant exoplanets formed

    February 13, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    drawing of gas giant planet being bombarded by meteorites
    One way gas giants form is through core accretion, where solid cores gradually grow in a disk by pulling in rocky and icy pebbles until they become massive enough to attract the gas that surrounds young stars. (cr: Jean-Baptiste Ruffio)

    JWST just found evidence that some “super-Jupiters” may have formed like planets, not failed stars. A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed like Jupiter, by slowly building solid cores. That’s unexpected because these planets are far bigger and orbit much farther from their star than models once allowed.

    Gas giants are enormous planets made primarily of hydrogen and helium...

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