What Will the JWST Peer At Next?

Posted on by onespaceman2000

If you are wondering where the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be looking in the future, some of that is known and some has yet to be determined. The approved targets of the space telescope can be found at the Programmatic Categories of JWST Science Observations site.

The site breaks the approved targets into these six categories:

  • General Observer (GO) Programs: Observations and archival research proposed by the community and selected by peer review.
  • Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) Programs: Observations defined by members of the instrument and telescope science teams, as well as a number of interdisciplinary scientists.
  • Director’s Discretionary Time (DDT): Time-critical observations that cannot be scheduled for a regular proposal cycle.
  • Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) Programs: Observations to be executed within the first five months of science operations and immediately released to the community.
  • Calibration Programs: Observations used to calibrate the science instruments in support of all the other science programs.
  • First Image Observations: The first observations following commissioning to demonstrate the observatory’s capabilities.

The GO Programs have been decided through Cycle 2. Earlier this month, the Space Telescope Science Institute put out a call for Cycle 3 Call for Proposals for the GO Programs. Proposals are due by October 25, 2023 and selected proposals will be announced in February 2024.

Take a look at the existing list and you will find plenty of interesting areas of study. For instance, under the Cycle 3 GTO Programs you have areas such as:

  • Titan Surface and Atmosphere;
  • Exoplanet search around Altair; and
  • Search for Varuna’s Satellite.

Space Stories: New Horizon Questions, A Dark Spot on Neptune, and Prioritizing Exoplanets

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Space.com : “NASA’s New Horizons Mission Faces an Uncertain Future (op-ed)“

With its budget being trimmed for 2024, NASA is making some weighty decisions… and one includes drastically trimming New Horizons funds by replacing the current science staff with a new team in an effort to save about $3 million—a rounding error in terms of the planetary science budget...As it stands, New Horizons will exit the Kuiper Belt around 2028 and should continue operating until 2050.

—ScienceDaily : “Mysterious Neptune Dark Spot Detected from Earth for the First Time“

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have observed a large dark spot in Neptune’s atmosphere, with an unexpected smaller bright spot adjacent to it. This is the first time a dark spot on the planet has ever been observed with a telescope on Earth. These occasional features in the blue background of Neptune’s atmosphere are a mystery to astronomers, and the new results provide further clues as to their nature and origin.

—Universe Today : “TESS has Found Thousands of Possible Exoplanets: Which Ones Should JWST Study?“

We will soon have more than 10,000 worlds where life might be able to survive. It’s an amazing idea, but with so many exoplanets we don’t have the resources to search for life on all of them. So how do we prioritize our search? That’s the focus of a recent paper on the pre-print server arxiv. In it, the team strives to identify the “best in class” candidates for exoplanets that could be further studied by the spectroscopic cameras of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Their list could not only help astronomers find evidence of life but also help us understand the range of atmospheres exoplanets have.

Space Stories: The End of Arecibo, Early Black Holes, and Habitable Red Dwarf Exoplanets

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Image (Credit): Aerial view of the damaged Arecibo Observatory after one of the main cables holding the receiver broke in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on December 1, 2020. (Photo by Ricardo ARDUENGO / AFP)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Scientific American : “Arecibo Observatory Shuts Down Its Science“

After weathering hurricanes, earthquakes, budget cuts and a pandemic-induced shutdown, the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico closed its doors on 14 August. After its main instrument collapsed two years ago, the site was supposed to shift from carrying out astronomy and other research to being a science education centre. But concrete plans for that have yet to materialize — and funding for current operations has run out. Scientists were disappointed that research would formally halt at the site, but they had hoped to keep some instruments running, both for the students who might use the educational centre and to continue the site’s astronomy legacy. Doubts now swirl, as equipment is taken offline and dismantled, that Arecibo will ever again study the sky.

—Quanta Magazine : “JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe“

In recent months, a torrent of observations of the cosmic smudges has delighted and confounded astronomers…The most straightforward explanation for the tornado-hearted galaxies is that large black holes weighing millions of suns are whipping the gas clouds into a frenzy. That finding is both expected and perplexing. It is expected because JWST was built, in part, to find the ancient objects. They are the ancestors of billion-sun behemoth black holes that seem to appear in the cosmic record inexplicably early. By studying these precursor black holes, such as three record-setting youngsters discovered this year, scientists hope to learn where the first humongous black holes came from and perhaps identify which of two competing theories better describes their formation: Did they grow extremely rapidly, or were they simply born big?

—Phys.org : “New Study Suggests Some Exoplanets Orbiting Red Dwarfs May be Habitable After All“

A team of astrophysicists from the University of Bordeaux and Observatoire Astronomique de l’Université de Genève is suggesting that some exoplanets may not have been too hot during their formative years to harbor life today. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group suggests that due to factors not considered in the past, some exoplanets may not have grown so hot that they lost the water in their atmospheres to evaporation into space.

Pic of the Week: Herbig-Haro 46/47

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Image (Credit): JWST image showing the formation of a pair of new stars. (NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows the formation of new stars 1,470 light-years away that will take millions of years to form.

Here is a partial description of what you are seeing from NASA (visit the link for the full desciption):

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “antics” of a pair of actively forming young stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in high-resolution near-infrared light. To find them, trace the bright pink and red diffraction spikes until you hit the center: The stars are within the orange-white splotch. They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars.

The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. Much of this material was shot out from those stars as they repeatedly ingest and eject the gas and dust that immediately surround them over thousands of years.

When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. This activity is like a large fountain being turned on and off in rapid, but random succession, leading to billowing patterns in the pool below it. Some jets send out more material and others launch at faster speeds. Why? It’s likely related to how much material fell onto the stars at a particular point in time.

Space Stories: Mars Ascent Vehicle, Dark Matter Stars, and a New Russian Space Station

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Mars Ascent Vehicle. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—NASA/JPJ.com : “NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle Continues Progress Toward Mars Sample Return“

NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently reached some major milestones in support of the Mars Sample Return program. The Mars Ascent Vehicle would be the first launch of a rocket from the surface of another planet. The team developing MAV conducted successful tests of the first and second stage solid rocket motors needed for the launch. Mars Sample Return will bring scientifically selected samples to Earth for study using the most sophisticated instrumentation around the world. This strategic partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) features the first mission to return samples from another planet. The samples currently being collected by NASA’s Perseverance Rover during its exploration of an ancient river delta have the potential to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient life.

—ScienceNews : “The James Webb Telescope May Have Spotted Stars Powered by Dark Matter“

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted objects in the early universe that might be a new kind of star — one powered by dark matter. These “dark stars” are still hypothetical. Their identification in JWST images is far from certain. But if any of the three candidates — reported in the July 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — turn out to be this new type of star, they could offer a glimpse of star formation in the early universe, hint at the nature of dark matter and possibly explain the origins of supermassive black holes.

—CNN : “Russia Proposes Joint Research Module on Space Station for China, India, Brazil and South Africa“

The head of Russia’s space agency has extended an offer to Moscow’s partners in the BRICS group – Brazil, India, China and South Africa – to participate in the construction of a joint module for its planned orbital space station, state media reported Monday. Construction of the planned space station follows Moscow’s decision last year to end its decades-long partnership with NASA and withdraw from the aging International Space Station – one of the last remaining channels of cooperation between Russia and the United States.