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NASA James Webb Space Telescope Multilayered Sunshield In this illustration, the multilayered sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stretches out beneath the observatory’s honeycomb mirror. The sunshield is the first step in cooling down Webb’s infrared instruments, but the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) requires additional help to reach its operating temperature. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has four observational modes. After measuring increased friction in one of the grating wheels used in MIRI’s medium resolution spectrometry (MRS) mode, the Webb team paused science observations using this specific mode on August...

On the left is a Hubble image of many faraway galaxies against the dark background of space. In the middle is a blown-up portion of the Hubble image, highlighting in various colors what the JWST's view of the galaxy merger looks like. On the right, each color from the image is separated so as to show the different velocities present. What you're looking at is evidence of a massive galaxy merger happening 11.5 billion light-years away. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, D. Wylezalek, A. Vayner & the Q3D Team, N. Zakamska Now that we have a powerful lens pointed toward the...

Editor’s Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. Here, Webb interdisciplinary scientist Rogier Windhorst and his team discuss their observations. “We got more than we bargained for by combining data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope! Webb’s new data allowed us to trace the light that was emitted by the bright white elliptical galaxy, at left, through the winding spiral galaxy at right – and identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. This image of galaxy pair VV 191 includes...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter...

The Orion Bar and the bright triple star θ2 Orionis A. (NASA, ESA, CSA, PDRs4All ERS Team, S. Fuenmayor & O. Berné) The Orion nebula is one of the most studied regions of our sky. It sits amidst the constellation of Orion, between the stars, and is so large, close, and bright it can be seen with the naked eye: a vast cloud complex giving birth to and nurturing baby stars. Because it is relatively close, at 1,344 light-years away, it's one of the most important observation targets in the sky for understanding star formation. Although we've been staring at...

According to scientists, images from the SPECULOOS (‘Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescopes, located in Chile and the island of Tenerife, have indicated that a distant planet may harbor the necessary conditions for life. The planet LP 890-9c orbits the star, LP 890-9, which rests 100 light-years from Earth. 40% larger than Earth, LP 890-9c orbits LP 890-9 roughly every 8.5 days, which was confirmed by the MuSCAT3 instrument in Hawaii. Scientists believe that fact permits the supposition that the planet exists in the “habitable zone” around the star. “The habitable zone is a concept under which a...

Swirling reds, whites, and light yellows mix around in front of a starry sky. In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute Once upon a space-time, a cosmic creation story unfolded: Thousands of never-before-seen...

Editor’s Note: This post highlights images from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. For the first time, astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets....

Over the past several weeks, NASA's ultra-powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has allowed humankind some unprecedented glimpses into the farthest reaches of our universe. And unsurprisingly, some of these dazzling new observations have raised more questions than they've answered.For a long time, for instance, scientists believed the universe's earliest, oldest galaxies to be small, slightly chaotic, and misshapen systems. But according to the Washington Post, JWST-captured imagery has revealed those galaxies to be shockingly massive, not to mention balanced and well-formed — a finding that challenges, and will likely rewrite, long-held understandings about the origins of our universe. "The...

Explanation: This new view of Jupiter is illuminating. High-resolution infrared images of Jupiter from the new James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) reveal, for example, previously unknown differences between high-floating bright clouds -- including the Great Red Spot -- and low-lying dark clouds. Also clearly visible in the featured Webb image are Jupiter's dust ring, bright auroras at the poles, and Jupiter's moons Amalthea and Adrastea. Large volcanic moon Io's magnetic funneling of charged particles onto Jupiter is also visible in the southern aurora. Some objects are so bright that light noticeably diffracts around Webb's optics creating streaks. Webb, which orbits...

NASA has shared a new image taken by its James Webb Space Telescope. Earlier this month, the space agency published photos of Cartwheel Galaxy. The galaxy is located in the Sculptor constellation approximately 500 million light-years from Earth. Now, NASA is using the telescope to get a closer look at the planet of Jupiter and its surrounding moons. As the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter is considered the third brightest object in the night sky from Earth, following the Moon and Venus. The new photograph was composed using two filters on the Webb’s NIRCam instrument, an imager that...

To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what...

spiral galaxies and distant galaxies are visible against the black void of space A small portion of deep space observed by JWST. NASA/STScI/CEERS/TACC/S. Finkelstein/M. Bagley/Z. Levay Astronomers armed with early data obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are hunting galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Rohan Naidu, an astrophysicist based at Harvard's and Smithsonian's jointly operated Center for Astrophysics, and his colleagues have been particularly good at uncovering these cosmic relics. Just a few days after the JWST's first images were beamed across the planet in July, Naidu and his collaborators...

"When a world famous physicist rushed to post groundbreaking pictures from the new James Webb Space Telescope of a distant planet, the first ever taken of it, people sat up and took notice. And by default anything such a person said is given great deference. You don’t expect someone like that to post something you later discover was a joke all along. But his approximately 92000 followers on Twitter learned that is exactly what it was. In this case it wasn’t really harmful as after an hour of teasing them all about Spanish charcuterie not existing anywhere but Earth, and...

July 22 (UPI) -- NASA's latest deep-space telescope continues to shock astronomers and amateurs with jaw-dropping new images captured from the outer reaches of the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope appears to have pictured a wormhole spinning in the "Phantom Galaxy," a place whose very center scientists believe may contain a black hole. "I've been doing this for 10 years now, and [Webb] data is new, different and exciting," Judy Schmidt, who processed raw data from NASA into a stunning photo of the Phantom Galaxy, told Space.com. "Of course I'm going to make something with it." The latest images...

It hasn't even been a fortnight since the first image release, and the James Webb Space Telescope is just continuously knocking all our socks off. Only a few images have been officially released, but that hasn't stopped citizen scientists digging through the raw data to see what they can find. One of those is Judy Schmidt, who has been processing raw space data into breathtaking images for years. Courtesy of her painstaking work, we now have absolutely jaw-dropping images of two spectacular spiral galaxies. The first is NGC 628, also known as the Phantom Galaxy. The other is NGC 7496....

If confirmed, it might be the most distant galaxy ever, but it's not the oldest. That's an important distinction. an amorphous red blob against the void of space Are we looking at the oldest galaxy ever found? No, but maybe, but yes? T. Treu/GLASS-JWST/NASA/CSA/ESA/STScI If you've been following the astronomy community on Twitter or, perhaps, Captain America himself, you've likely come across a story about the James Webb Space Telescope's latest find: the "oldest galaxy we've ever seen." This is exactly what we were promised from the James Webb Space Telescope. Only a week ago, the world's collective jaw hit...

The GLASS-z13 galaxy imaged by JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI/AFP) Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analyzed the data said Wednesday. Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years earlier than anything previously identified, Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics told AFP. "We're potentially looking at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen," he said. The more distant objects...

As NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope is sending back its first remarkable images of our universe, “queer agender” feminist physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein wants you to know she remains miffed at the telescope’s moniker. Late last year, the University of New Hampshire professor and three other scientists demanded NASA ditch Webb’s name from the project due to his alleged homophobia. Prior to Webb’s appointment as head of NASA in 1961, he allegedly played a role in the so-called “Lavender Scare” as a State Department official. In response to a petition started by Prescod-Weinstein et. al., NASA investigated the issue last...

Graphic on the different types of "exoplanets" which the new James Webb telescope will be investigating to determine the composition of their atmospheres and the presence of water. The first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed this week, but its journey of cosmic discovery has only just begun. Here is a look at two early projects that will take advantage of the orbiting observatory's powerful instruments. The first stars and galaxiesOne of the great promises of the telescope is its ability to study the earliest phase of cosmic history, shortly after the Big Bang 13.8...