Free Republic

Explanation: Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82, red glowing gas and dust are being cast out from the center. Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. In the featured images, a Hubble Space Telescope image in visible light is shown...

Looking deeply into space and time, two teams using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old. Initially detected with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this galaxy — one of the youngest and most distant ever observed — is so bright that it is challenging scientists to understand why. Now, GN-z11 is giving up some of its secrets. Vigorous Black Hole Is Most Distant Ever Found A team studying GN-z11 with Webb found the first clear evidence that the galaxy is hosting a...

Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, W1935, is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source for the upper atmosphere energy. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae. These findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American...

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured detailed images of Uranus, revealing its dynamic atmosphere, including rings, moons, and storms. This enhanced view contrasts with earlier images, showing a more active Uranus with a prominent seasonal north polar cloud cap and several storms. These observations are vital for understanding the planet’s complex atmosphere and may also provide insights into the study of exoplanets. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI New View Reveals a Strange and Dynamic Ice World When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the planet appeared to be a nearly featureless, solid blue ball. Now, Webb shows us...

Mysterious features hide in near-infrared light Like a shiny, round ornament ready to be placed in the perfect spot on a holiday tree, supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) gleams in a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. As part of the 2023 Holidays at the White House, First Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden debuted the first-ever White House Advent Calendar. To showcase the “Magic, Wonder, and Joy” of the holiday season, Dr. Biden and NASA are celebrating with this new image from Webb. While all is bright, this scene is no proverbial silent night....

Illustration of how a failed supernova can become a black hole. (P. Jeffries/STScI/NASA/ESA) In 2009 a giant star 25 times more massive than the Sun simply…vanished. Okay, it wasn't quite that simple. It underwent a period of brightening, increasing in luminosity to a million Suns, just as if it was ready to explode into a supernova. But then it faded rather than exploding. And when astronomers tried to see the star, using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), Hubble, and the Spitzer space telescope, they couldn't see anything. The star, known as N6946-BH1, is now considered a failed supernova. The BH1...

This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data. K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth. A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI),...

Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered multiple debris rings within a previously discovered ring around the young star Fomalhaut. Photo Courtesy of NASA May 9 (UPI) -- Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope observed multiple debris rings surrounding a young star. The James Webb Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, which is designed to capture very long wavelengths of light, found three nested belts surrounding the Fomalhaut star, out to a distance of up to 14 billion miles, NASA said Monday. Observations by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite first discovered Fomalhuat's dust ring, the first asteroid belt seen outside of...

JWST's new image of WR 124 and its nebula. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team) There's scintillating beauty to be found in cosmic death. In a new image from the JWST, the spectacular final throes of a star nearing the end of its life are revealed in all their intricate detail. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, the star WR 124 is what's known as a Wolf-Rayet, which are rarely seen in the Milky Way. That's because only certain stars turn into Wolf-Rayets, and even then their time in that phase is so short; in just a few hundred...

Scientists say that images from the James Webb Space Telescope may change how they understand the origins of the universe after they discovered "the impossible." The findings were published in the journal "Nature" on Wednesday. Astronomers expected to find "tiny, young, baby galaxies" from the cosmic history documented in the images, but they found something else entirely. The study's lead author, Ivo Labbé, explained how shocked he was when he realized what the images meant. "Little did I know that among the pictures is a small red dot that will shake up our understanding of how the first galaxies formed...

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...

Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured these star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the Pillars of Creation. This James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam image expands Hubble's exploration of that region in greater detail and depth inside the iconic stellar nursery. Particularly stunning in Webb's near infrared view is the telltale reddish emission from knots of material undergoing gravitational collapse to form stars within the natal clouds. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant. The larger bright emission nebula is itself an easy target for...

Physicist Eric J. Lerner comes to the point: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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Image developers on the Webb team are tasked with turning the telescope’s infrared image data into some of the most vivid views of the cosmos we’ve ever had. They assign various infrared wavelengths to colors on the visible spectrum, the familiar reds, blues, yellows, etc. Longer infrared waves are assigned redder colors, and the shortest infrared wavelengths are assigned bluer colors. (Blue and violet light has the shortest wavelengths within the visible spectrum, while red has the longest.) The process is called chromatic ordering, and the spectrum is split into as many colors as the team needs to capture the...

Cartwheel Galaxy (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image) A large pink, speckled galaxy resembling a wheel with a small, inner oval, with dusty blue in between on the right, with two smaller spiral galaxies about the same size to the left against a black background. This image of the Cartwheel and its companion galaxies is a composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which reveals details that are difficult to see in the individual images alone. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Webb’s Instruments Reveal New Details About Star Formation The incredible imaging capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space...

"Homophobic Telescope Reveals First Hi-Res Images of Deep Space."First a disclaimer. That is not a headline from the Babylon Bee. It is an actual MSN headline of a July 13 story about the first amazing images seen from the James Webb Space Telescope. How can it be homophobic?MSN is borrowing from "INTO," which calls itself "A Digital Magazine for the Modern Queer World."While most people were amazed by the images sent by the Webb Telescope -- which is so powerful it can peer back almost to the beginning of time -- MSN's article was absurdly obsessed with the man it...