Pic of the Week: Quasar RX J1131-1231

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Image (Credit): Quasar known as RX J1131-1231, which is located roughly 6 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg)

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope. It was highlighted in USAToday as one of the best images from 2024. It shows the gravitational lensing of RX J1131-1231, which is a quasar about 6 billion light-years from Earth.

Here is more about the image:

It is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, as the foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc and creates four images of the object. Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars, by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. All matter in the Universe warps the space around itself, with larger masses producing a more pronounced effect. Around very massive objects, such as galaxies, light that passes close by follows this warped space, appearing to bend away from its original path by a clearly visible amount. One of the consequential effects of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, letting astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or far away.

Pic of the Week: The Red Monsters

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Image (Credit): The “Red Monsters” as captured by the JWST. (NASA/CSA/ESA, M. Xiao & P. A. Oesch (University of Geneva), G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute), Dawn JWST Archive)

This week’s image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was highlighted by researchers at the University of Bath. It represents three ultra-massive galaxies about the size of our Milky Way from the first billion years of the universe following the Big Bang.

The researchers discuss this in their paper in Nature, Accelerated Formation of Ultra-massive Galaxies in the First Billion Years. The abstract is a bit too technical, but suffice it to say that this is a significant discovery.

As noted in Tech Exporist, Dr. Mengyuan Xiao, lead author of the new study and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy at UNIGE Faculty of Science, stated:

These results indicate that galaxies in the early Universe could form stars with unexpected efficiency. As we study these galaxies in more depth, they will offer new insights into the conditions that shaped the Universe’s earliest epochs. The ‘Red Monsters’ are just the beginning of a new era in our exploration of the early Universe.

Pic of the Week: Galaxies Passing in the Night

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Image (Credit): Galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

This week’s image showing two galaxies – IC 2163 and NGC 2207 – comes from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Here is more about the image from Hubblesite.org:

The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago. The smaller spiral on the left, cataloged as IC 2163, passed behind NGC 2207, the larger spiral galaxy at right.

Both have increased star formation rates. Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year.

Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed new many stars to form. (Find these areas by looking for the bluest regions).

Study Findings: Detection of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Peroxide on the Stratified Surface of Charon with JWST

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Image (Credit): Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, as captures by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Nature Communications abstract of the study findings:

Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, has been extensively studied, with research focusing on its primitive composition and changes due to radiation and photolysis. However, spectral data have so far been limited to wavelengths below 2.5 μm, leaving key aspects unresolved. Here we present the detection of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on the surface of Charon’s northern hemisphere, using JWST data. These detections add to the known chemical inventory that includes crystalline water ice, ammonia-bearing species, and tholin-like darkening constituents previously revealed by ground- and space-based observations. The H2O2 presence indicates active radiolytic/photolytic processing of the water ice-rich surface by solar ultraviolet and interplanetary medium Lyman-α photons, solar wind, and galactic cosmic rays. Through spectral modeling of the surface, we show that the CO2 is present in pure crystalline form and, possibly, in intimately mixed states on the surface. Endogenically sourced subsurface CO2 exposed on the surface is likely the primary source of this component, with possible contributions from irradiation of hydrocarbons mixed with water ice, interfacial radiolysis between carbon deposits and water ice, and the implantation of energetic carbon ions from the solar wind and solar energetic particles.

Citation: Protopapa, S., Raut, U., Wong, I. et al. Detection of carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the stratified surface of Charon with JWST. Nat Commun 15, 8247 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51826-4

Study-related stories:

Reuters

Science Alert

Futurism

Pic of the Week: Peeking into Perseus

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Image (Credit): The star-forming cluster NGC 1333 as seen by the JWST. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana)

This week’s image of a distant nebula with new stars was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The nebula, NGC 1333, is located in the Perseus molecular cloud, which is about 960 light-years away.

Here is more information on the image from the European Space Agency:

The centre of the image presents a deep peek into the heart of the NGC 1333 cloud. Across the image we see large patches of orange, which represent gas glowing in the infrared. These so-called Herbig-Haro objects form when ionised material ejected from young stars collides with the surrounding cloud. They are hallmarks of a very active site of star formation.

Many of the young stars in this image are surrounded by discs of gas and dust, which may eventually produce planetary systems. On the right hand side of the image, we can glimpse the shadow of one of these discs oriented edge-on — two dark cones emanating from opposite sides, seen against a bright background.

Similarly to the young stars in this mosaic, our own Sun and planets formed inside a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun didn’t form in isolation but as part of a cluster, which was perhaps even more massive than NGC 1333. The cluster in the mosaic, only 1–3 million years old, presents us with an opportunity to study stars like our Sun, as well as brown dwarfs and free-floating planets, in their nascent stages.