Ars Technica reports, “NASA has shared side-by-side views of these clusters taken in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope and in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope. Hubble’s image captures the glowing, ionized gas as stellar radiation produces what look like bubbles in the clouds of gas and dust, whereas Webb highlights the clumps and delicate filamentary structures of dust.”
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Tag: James Webb Space Telescope
James Webb Space Telescope Detects Alien Planetary System’s Icy Edge
SPACE reports, “At long last, particles of water–ice have been discovered in the frozen Kuiper Belt of another star. The discovery, made by the James Webb Space Telescope, is a major step forward in filling in gaps in our understanding of how exoplanets develop.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Water Vapor in Distant Planet’s Atmosphere
SPACE reports, “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has found water vapor swirling in the air of a distant, boiling-hot alien planet, a new study reports. That exotic world is TOI-421 b, a boiling-hot “sub-Neptune” orbiting a star about 244 light-years from Earth whose atmosphere JWST recently probed in detail.”
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Webb Telescope Spots Possible Signature of Life on Distant Planet
The Washington Post reports, “A distant planet’s atmosphere shows signs of molecules that on Earth are associated only with biological activity, a possible signal of life on what is suspected to be a watery world, according to a report published Wednesday that analyzed observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The peer-reviewed report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents more questions than answers, acknowledges numerous uncertainties and does not declare the discovery of life beyond Earth, something never conclusively detected. But the authors do claim to have found the best evidence to date of a possible “biosignature” on a planet far from our solar system.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Damaged by Meteoroids
BBC News reports that one of the main mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been damaged by impact of a small meteoroid. NASA reports the meteoroid struck the space observatory “sometime between 23 and 25 May,” but is unlikely to affect mission performance.
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SpaceX Launches Falcon 9 for Second Time in Three Weeks
Spaceflight Now reported that SpaceX “continued throttling up its launch rate with another Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral Friday, completing a rapid recycle with a Falcon 9 first stage booster flying for the second time in 21 days.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Fully Aligned
CNN reports that the James Webb Space Telescope is now “completely aligned, according to the NASA’s Webb team.” Webb “will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe began by observing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.” The first high-resolution images “Webb collects of the cosmos aren’t expected until the end of June since the observatory’s instruments still need to be calibrated.”
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James Webb Space Telescope Components Cooling to Deep Space Temperature
SPACE reported that there is no timeline as to when all the James Webb Space Telescope’s “observatory components will meet their operating temperatures.” Webb Deputy Senior Project Scientist Jonathan Gardner said Thursday the telescope’s mirrors “are not quite there yet.” All “of the observatory’s instruments are at their final temperature, including the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which is super-sensitive to heat and gets some help from a cryocooler to stay around 7 degrees Kelvin (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 266 degrees Celsius).”
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Fully Focused James Webb Space Telescope Beats Expectations
BBC News reports that NASA released the first properly focused image from the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA engineer Lee Feinberg said they have now managed to fully focus the observatory on a test star, and the pin-sharp performance is even better than expected. However, NASA cautioned that a lot of work still remains before the telescope can be declared operational. The star used for the test image is “a generic, anonymous star” with the right level of brightness. ESA Science & Exploration Senior Advisor Mark McCaughrean said the “spike” structures were a function of the design of the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror. He said the shape of the 18 hexagons imprints a faint diffraction pattern that makes bright stars look like “spiky snowflakes,” giving images of the observatory a very distinctive look.
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James Webb Space Telescope Begins Alignment Process
SPACE reports that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission team members “have begun the three-month process of aligning the $10 billion Webb.” For the first time, “photons from distant stars traveled through the entire telescope and were detected by Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.” NASA officials wrote Thursday, “This milestone marks the first of many steps to capture images that are at first unfocused and use them to slowly fine-tune the telescope. This is the very beginning of the process, but so far the initial results match expectations and simulations.” The alignment process involves seven phases, “which will key on imagery Webb captures of the bright star HD 84406.”
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