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James Webb Space Telescope

Viewing Posts from February 2023

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    Webb Observes a Globular Cluster Sparkling with Separate Stars

    A rectangular image oriented horizontally appears to be two separate square images with a wide black gap in between. The two squares do not mirror each other exactly or align perfectly together. It looks instead like they are two parts of a larger image that has been obscured in the middle by black strip. Both squares are filled with blue, white, yellow, and red points of light of different size and brightness, most of which are stars. The larger and brighter stars show Webb's distinctive diffraction pattern consisting of eight spikes radiating from the center. Both squares show an increase in density of stars toward the central gap. Altogether, the stars appear to form a loose ball-like shape whose core is obscured by the gap.

    Editor's Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. On June 20, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope spent just over one hour staring at Messier 92 (M92), a globular cluster 27,000 light-years away in the Milky Way halo. The observation – among the …

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    Breaking the Tracking Speed Limit With Webb

    In September, the James Webb Space Telescope observed as NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally smashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid, in the world's first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. Today, we hear from Stefanie Milam, Webb's deputy project scientist for planetary science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, about how the Webb …

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