Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Scottish astronomers at the University of Edinburgh believe they have spotted a galaxy that is about 35 billion light-years away, showing us the galaxy as it would have appeared 235 million years after the Big Bang. This would make it the most distant galaxy ever captured by astronomers.
Image (Credit): This diagram shows Lucy’s orbital path in green after her October 2021 launch to visit the Trojan asteroids. (Southwest Research Institute)
Last week I noted some of the mission priorities in the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) first year. Those priorities were listed under “Exoplanets and Disks.” I thought I would highlight a few more, this time from the “Solar System Astronomy” list. Here are five more priorities:
Pluto’s Climate System with JWST;
The Moons of Uranus: A NIRSpec Investigation of Their Origins, Organic Constituents, and Possible Ocean World Activity;
A Pure Parallel Survey of Water in the Asteroid Belt;
DiSCo-TNOs: Discovering the Composition of the Trans-Neptunian Objects, Icy Embryos for Planet Formation; and
JWST Observations of Lucy Mission Targets.
Each of these priorities come with an explanation of the mission. For example, here is a little more about NASA’s Lucy mission from the JWST proposal:
The Lucy spacecraft – to be launched at approximately the same time as JWST – will perform the first ever in situ exploration of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Trojans are the largest population of solar system bodies currently unvisited by spacecraft, and revealing their composition and formation history is the key to untangling disparate hypothesis for the early dynamical evolution of the entire solar system.
Understanding these enigmatic bodies requires not just the high spatial resolution imagery and spectroscopy that will be afforded by Lucy, but also the superb near- and mid-infrared spectroscopy of which JWST is uniquely capable. The high signal-to-noise, high spectral resolution, and extended wavelength coverage beyond the capabilities of Lucy will allow JWST to sensitively probe the organic, carbonate, and silicate components of the surfaces of the Trojans. Meanwhile, the Lucy spectra and images will place these observations into their geological and historical context, greatly extending the scientific utility of both the JWST observations and the Lucy visit. Together these observations will paint a rich picture of this population, allowing us to trace connections with other bodies studied remotely and in situ across the solar system.
Lucy was launched last October and is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid until August 2027. You can find the full mission timeline here.
Image (Credit): Recent JWST analysis of exoplanet WASP-96 b. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
The recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images included hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b, with NASA noting that the space telescope “…has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.”
The same NASA article also noted that the Hubble Space Telescope had found the first evidence of water on a exoplanet back in 2013. So I thought I would dig out that earlier from the European Space Agency, titled “Hubble Finds Water Vapour on Habitable-Zone Exoplanet for the First Time“:
With data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, water vapour has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth within the habitable zone by University College London (UCL) researchers in a world first. K2-18b, which is eight times the mass of Earth, is now the only planet orbiting a star outside the Solar System, or exoplanet, known to have both water and temperatures that could support life.
The parent star, K2-18, is 110 light years from Earth in the constellation of Leo. Maybe we can convince the ESA and others to take another look with the JWST, assuming it is not already on the list of many upcoming projects.
Image (Credit): Stephan’s Quintet, representing a grouping of five galaxies, as captured by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
I think we are all eager for more amazing photos from the James Webb Space Telescope, but we need to remember that the space telescope has a long list of priorities and these were not simply random images. An international committee with representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) decided on the future work of the space telescope.
The committee has shared these five missions represented by the images already released to the public, indicating the JWST has been pretty busy already:
Carina Nebula: The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars several times larger than the Sun.
WASP-96b (spectrum): WASP-96b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014.
Southern Ring Nebula: The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light-years away from Earth.
Stephan’s Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1787. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.
SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.
So what else is planned? NASA believes the JWST can stay in operation for the next 5 to 10 years, so it has a fair amount of time to allocate to scientists. This link takes you to the 266 approved projects for the telescope’s first year, representing approximately 6,000 hours of JWST prime time and up to 1,231 hours of parallel time. For instance, during the first year you have “Exoplanets and Disks” projects such as:
Icy Kuiper Belts in Exoplanetary Systems;
Unlocking the Mysteries of the Archetype Sub-Neptune GJ1214b with a Full-Orbit Phase Curve;
A Search for the Giant Planets that Drive White Dwarf Accretion;
Tell Me How I’m Supposed To Breathe With No Air: Measuring the Prevalence and Diversity of M-Dwarf Planet Atmospheres; and
Diamonds are Forever: Probing the Carbon Budget and Formation History of the Ultra-Puffy Hot Jupiter WASP-127b.
That is just a sample, but you can see from some of that titles that the scientists are having fun. Expect hundreds of new discoveries this year resulting from these observations.
Image (Credit): The Carina Nebula as captured by the JWST. (NASA)
This week’s image is an amazing view of the Carina Nebula from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is one of the first images released by NASA this week. More of the early images are available here.
Here is NASA’s description of what you are seeing in this image:
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.
I look forward to posting more such images as they are released.
Our Awesome Universe 