JWST Spots Saturn-Like Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): JWST image subtracting light from the star TWA 7 (marked with a circle and a star symbol) to highlight the exoplanet identified as TWA 7 b. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Anne-Marie Lagrange (CNRS, UGA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb))

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ) continues to amaze us with its discoveries. It has now captured the image of an exoplanet with the mass of Saturn orbiting star TWA 7, representing the first exoplanet captured by JWST in this way. TWA 7 is a young red dwarf star located about 34 light-years away.

JWST used its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) coronograph to mask the light of the star so that the light from orbiting exoplanets could be detected. Astronomers are pretty confident that what they are seeing is an orbiting planet rather than a star or galaxy in the background. For example, the smaller orange orb on the left represents a background star.

Anne-Marie Lagrange, CNRS researcher at the Observatoire de Paris-PSL and Université Grenoble Alpes in France as well as lead author of the Nature paper, stated.

Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disk, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass.

NASA’s investments are paying off as we attempt to learn more about this strange universe of ours. Hopefully, members of Congress are paying attention.

Space Quote: The Pope Discusses the JWST

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Nimrod Oren from Pixabay.

“Do not the James Webb images also fill us with wonder, and indeed a mysterious joy, as we contemplate their sublime beauty?…The authors of sacred Scripture, writing so many centuries ago, did not have the benefit of this privilege, yet their poetic and religious imagination pondered what the moment of creation must have been like.”

–Statement by Pope Leo XIV to astronomy students who are part of a summer program hosted by the Vatican Observatory. This year the students are studying data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Video: Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Ongoing work to make the JWST a reality. (NASA)

If you are looking for some inspiration about the US space program, you might want to watch this NASA video, “Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope.”

As the NASA site explains:

Go behind the scenes with the dedicated NASA team and its partners to uncover the untold story of the James Webb Space Telescope. “Cosmic Dawn” unveils the immense challenges, groundbreaking innovations, and extraordinary efforts behind humanity’s most powerful eye on our universe, from its complex development to its nail-biting deployment a million miles away.

This is what it takes to explore our universe, and I only hope we can continue to maintain the stamina, skills, and public support to maintain the JWST and initiate similar programs.

It may be time to write to Congress and let them know that America needs more of this grit and determination, not less.

Video: The Dark Forest

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Yol Gezer from Pixabay.

And now for something really different. If you are tired of national politics, maybe its time to talk about the extinction of all life in our solar system. Just for a change of topic, of course.

The Cool Worlds Lab has an interesting video titled “Why I Don’t Buy The Dark Forest Hypothesis” that picks apart this idea that technologically advanced species throughout the galaxy are hiding from one another out of the fear that once detected they may be destroyed. You may remember the term Dark Forest from a book of the same title by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.

Its a good discussion of the hypothesis, with plenty of diagrams mapping out a civilization’s decision to either reply to, ignore, or attack a newly discovered civilization trying to communicate.

I don’t want to spoil everything, but the bottom line is that it is probably too late for us to worry about this anyway. First, we have already sent out plenty of electronic messages as well as messages intended for alien civilizations. But more importantly, the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us that a silent civilization on a distant exoplanet can still be detected as we investigate that exoplanet’s atmosphere. So if a dangerous distant civilizations was seeking out other planets with life that it could destroy, the Earth has been telegraphing life for more than 3.5 billion years.

Check it out and learn more about the hypothesis and the arguments for and against it.

Pic of the Week: Galaxy Cluster Abell S1063

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Galaxy cluster Abell S1063. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Atek, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), R. Endsley)

This week’s image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). The colorful image shows galaxy cluster Abell S1063 at its center. You can get dizzy if you stare at it too long. You are looking far back in time, which would make anyone dizzy.

Here is a description of what you are seeing:

This behemoth collection of galaxies, lying 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), dominates the scene. Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by glowing streaks of light, and these warped arcs are the true object of scientists’ interest: faint galaxies from the Universe’s distant past.

Abell S1063 was previously observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Frontier Fields programme. It is a strong gravitational lens: the galaxy cluster is so massive that the light of distant galaxies aligned behind it is bent around it, creating the warped arcs that we see here. Like a glass lens, it focuses the light from these faraway galaxies. The resulting images, albeit distorted, are both bright and magnified — enough to be observed and studied. This was the aim of Hubble’s observations, using the galaxy cluster as a magnifying glass to investigate the early Universe.

The new imagery from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) takes this quest even further back in time. This image showcases an incredible forest of lensing arcs around Abell S1063, which reveal distorted background galaxies at a range of cosmic distances, along with a multitude of faint galaxies and previously unseen features.