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James Webb Space Telescope

  • Reconnaissance of Potentially Habitable Worlds with NASA’s Webb

    Exoplanets are common in our galaxy, and some even orbit in the so-called habitable zone of their star. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been busy observing a few of these small, potentially habitable planets, and astronomers are now hard at work analyzing Webb data. We invite Drs. Knicole Colón and Christopher Stark, two Webb …

  • NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Finds Most Distant Known Galaxy

    Alt text: A field of thousands of small galaxies of various shapes and colors on the black background of space. A bright foreground star with diffraction spikes is at lower left. Near image center, a tiny white box outlines a region and two diagonal lines lead to a larger box in upper right, enlarging the view of this area. Within the box is a banana-shaped blob that is blueish-red in one half and distinctly red in the other half. An arrow points to the redder portion and is labeled “JADES GS z 14 0 .”

    Editor’s Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. Over the last two years, scientists have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (also called Webb or JWST) to explore what astronomers refer to as Cosmic Dawn –  the period in the first few hundred …

  • NASA’s Webb Makes the Distant Universe Dream Come True

    NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is delivering on its promise to explore the farthest reaches of the universe, looking back to a time when galaxies were just beginning to form. Scientists have been eagerly waiting to use this complex observatory to understand details that have been out of reach. We invite Alan Dressler, astronomer emeritus …

  • Supernova Encore: NASA’s Webb Spots a Second Lensed Supernova in a Distant Galaxy

    Editor's Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. In November 2023, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope observed a massive cluster of galaxies named MACS J0138.0-2155. Through an effect called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, a distant galaxy named MRG-M0138 appears warped by …

  • Measuring the Distances to Galaxies With Space Telescopes

    One of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's science goals is to understand how galaxies in the early universe formed and evolved into much larger galaxies like our own Milky Way. This goal requires that we identify samples of galaxies at different moments in the universe's history to explore how their properties evolve with time. We …

  • NASA’s Webb Identifies Methane In an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

    An artists rendering of a blue and white exoplanet known as WASP-80 b, set on a star-studded black background. Alternating horizontal layers of cloudy white, grey and blue cover the planets surface. To the right of the planet, a rendering of the chemical methane is depicted with four hydrogen atoms bonded to a central carbon atom, representing methane within the exoplanet's atmosphere.

    NASA's James Webb Space Telescope observed the exoplanet WASP-80 b as it passed in front of and behind its host star, revealing spectra indicative of an atmosphere containing methane gas and water vapor. While water vapor has been detected in over a dozen planets to date, until recently methane – a molecule found in abundance …

  • Webb Confirms Accuracy of Universe’s Expansion Rate Measured by Hubble, Deepens Mystery of Hubble Constant Tension

    A large galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The galaxy has a bright white core, and several large spiral arms extending out from that core, rotating clockwise. The arms are light blue with many pink speckles and clumps littering the arms. The background is also filled with a smattering of white and pink dots.

    The rate at which the universe is expanding, known as the Hubble constant, is one of the fundamental parameters for understanding the evolution and ultimate fate of the cosmos. However, a persistent difference called the "Hubble Tension" is seen between the value of the constant measured with a wide range of independent distance indicators and …

  • Mid-Infrared Instrument Operations Update

    In this illustration, the multilayered sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stretches out beneath the observatory’s honeycomb mirror

    On Apr. 21, 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope team shared that one of the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observing modes, called Medium-Resolution Spectroscopy (MRS), showed a reduction in the amount of light registered by MIRI's detectors. Initial analysis of MIRI's imaging mode did not show a similar effect. However, as part of the team's investigation …

  • Webb Reveals Intricate Details in the Remains of a Dying Star

    This image of the Ring Nebula appears as a distorted doughnut. The nebula's inner cavity hosts shades of blue and green, while the detailed ring transitions through shades of orange in the inner regions and pink in the outer region. The ring's inner region has distinct filament elements.

    Editor's Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope obtained images of the Ring Nebula, one of the best-known examples of a planetary nebula. Much like the Southern Ring Nebula, one of Webb's first images, the Ring Nebula displays intricate …