James Webb Space Telescope

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  • James Webb Space Telescope Podcast OutlineEpisode 1: Introduction to the James Webb Space Telescope
    • What is the James Webb Space Telescope?
    • Why is it so important?
    • What are its goals?
    • How does it work?
    • What kind of discoveries can we expect from it?
    Episode 2: The Latest News and Discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope
    • What are the latest images and data from the James Webb Space Telescope?
    • What have we learned about the universe so far?
    • What are some of the most exciting discoveries yet to come?
    Episode 3: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Search for Exoplanets
    • What are exoplanets?
    • How can the James Webb Space Telescope help us find and study them?
    • What are some of the most promising exoplanet candidates?
    • Could the James Webb Space Telescope help us find evidence of life beyond Earth?
    Episode 4: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Early Universe
    • What can the James Webb Space Telescope tell us about the early universe?
    • How did the first stars and galaxies form?
    • What role did dark matter and dark energy play in the evolution of the universe?
    Episode 5: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Future of Astronomy
    • How will the James Webb Space Telescope change the way we study the universe?
    • What are some of the most exciting scientific questions that it could answer?
    • What can we expect from the next generation of space telescopes?
    Episode 6: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Public
    • How can the public get involved with the James Webb Space Telescope?
    • Where can you find images, data, and other information about the telescope?
    • How can you talk to scientists and engineers who are working on the project?
    Episode 7: The James Webb Space Telescope and the Future of Space Exploration
    • What role will the James Webb Space Telescope play in future space exploration missions?
    • How can it help us prepare for human missions to Mars and beyond?
    • What are the ethical implications of the James Webb Space Telescope and other powerful space telescopes?
    Episode 8: The James Webb Space Telescope and Our Place in the Universe
    • What can the James Webb Space Telescope teach us about our place in the universe?
    • Are we alone?
    • What is our future as a spacefaring species?
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Episodios
  • NASA’s Webb Investigates Eternal Sunrises, Sunsets on Distant World

    NASA’s Webb Investigates Eternal Sunrises, Sunsets on Distant World
    Jul 19 2024
    Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but similar mass to Saturn that orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth, is tidally locked to its parent star. This means it has a constant dayside and a constant nightside—one side of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the eternal morning and eternal evening on WASP-39 b, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the forever morning portion of the planet being likely cloudier than the evening.Astronomers analyzed the 2- to 5-micron transmission spectrum of WASP-39 b, a technique that studies the exoplanet’s terminator, the boundary that separates the planet’s dayside and nightside. A transmission spectrum is made by comparing starlight filtered through a planet’s atmosphere as it moves in front of the star, to the unfiltered starlight detected when the planet is beside the star. When making that comparison, researchers can get information about the temperature, composition, and other properties of the planet’s atmosphere.“WASP-39 b has become a sort of benchmark planet in studying the atmosphere of exoplanets with Webb,” said Néstor Espinoza, an exoplanet researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute and lead author on the study. “It has an inflated, puffy atmosphere, so the signal coming from starlight filtered through the planet’s atmosphere is quite strong.”Previously published Webb spectra of WASP-39b’s atmosphere, which revealed the presence of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, water vapor, and sodium, represent the entire day/night boundary – there was no detailed attempt to differentiate between one side and the other.Now, the new analysis builds two different spectra from the terminator region, essentially splitting the day/night boundary into two semicircles, one from the evening, and the other from the morning. Data reveals the evening as significantly hotter, a searing 1,450 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius), and the morning a relatively cooler 1,150 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius).“It’s really stunning that we are able to parse this small difference out, and it’s only possible due Webb’s sensitivity across near-infrared wavelengths and its extremely stable photometric sensors,” said Espinoza. “Any tiny movement in the instrument or with the observatory while collecting data would have severely limited our ability to make this detection. It must be extraordinarily precise, and Webb is just that.”Extensive modeling of the data obtained also allows researchers to investigate the structure of WASP-39 b’s atmosphere, the cloud cover, and why the evening is hotter. While future work by the team will study how the cloud cover may affect temperature, and vice versa, astronomers confirmed gas circulation around the planet as the main culprit of the temperature difference on WASP-39 b.On a highly irradiated exoplanet like WASP-39 b that orbits relatively close to its star, researchers generally expect the gas to be moving as the planet rotates around its star: Hotter gas from the dayside should move through the evening to the nightside via a powerful equatorial jet stream. Since the temperature difference is so extreme, the air pressure difference would also be significant, which in turn would cause high wind speeds.Using General Circulation Models, 3-dimensional models similar to the ones used to predict weather patterns on Earth, researchers found that on WASP-39 b the prevailing winds are likely moving from the night side across the morning terminator, around the dayside, across the evening terminator and then around the nightside. As a result, the morning side of the terminator is cooler than the evening side. In other words, the morning side gets slammed with winds of air that have been cooled on the nightside, while the evening is hit by winds of air heated on the dayside. Research suggests the wind speeds on WASP-39 b can reach thousands of miles an hour!“This analysis is also particularly interesting because you’re getting 3D information on the planet that you weren’t getting before,” added Espinoza. “Because we can tell that the evening edge is hotter, that means it’s a little puffier. So, theoretically, there is a small swell at the terminator approaching the nightside of the planet.”The team’s results have been published in Nature.The researchers will now look to use the same method of analysis to study atmospheric differences of other tidally locked hot ...
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    6 m
  • Galaxies Actively Forming in Early Universe Caught Feeding on Cold Gas

    Galaxies Actively Forming in Early Universe Caught Feeding on Cold Gas
    May 28 2024
    Researchers analyzing data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed three galaxies that may be actively forming when the universe was only 400 to 600 million years old. Webb’s data shows these galaxies are surrounded by gas that the researchers suspect to be almost purely hydrogen and helium, the earliest elements to exist in the cosmos. Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that they were able to detect an unusual amount of dense gas surrounding these galaxies. This gas will likely end up fueling the formation of new stars in the galaxies.
    “These galaxies are like sparkling islands in a sea of otherwise neutral, opaque gas,” explained Kasper Heintz, the lead author and an assistant professor of astrophysics at the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. “Without Webb, we would not be able to observe these very early galaxies, let alone learn so much about their formation.”
    “We’re moving away from a picture of galaxies as isolated ecosystems. At this stage in the history of the universe, galaxies are all intimately connected to the intergalactic medium with its filaments and structures of pristine gas,” added Simone Nielsen, a co-author and PhD student also based at DAWN.
    The universe was a very different place several hundred million years after the big bang during a period known as the Era of Reionization. Gas between stars and galaxies was largely opaque. Gas throughout the universe only became fully transparent around 1 billion years after the big bang. Galaxies’ stars contributed to heating and ionizing the gas around them, causing the gas to eventually become completely transparent.
    By matching Webb’s data to models of star formation, the researchers also found that these galaxies primarily have populations of young stars. “The fact that we are seeing large gas reservoirs also suggests that the galaxies have not had enough time to form most of their stars yet,” Watson added.
    This is Only the Start
    Webb is not only meeting the mission goals that drove its development and launch – it is exceeding them. “Images and data of these distant galaxies were impossible to obtain before Webb,” explained Gabriel Brammer, a co-author and associate professor at DAWN. “Plus, we had a good sense of what we were going to find when we first glimpsed the data – we were almost making discoveries by eye.”
    There remain many more questions to address. Where, specifically, is the gas? How much is located near the centers of the galaxies – or in their outskirts? Is the gas pristine or already populated by heavier elements? Significant research lies ahead. “The next step is to build large statistical samples of galaxies and quantify the prevalence and prominence of their features in detail,” Heintz said.
    The researchers’ findings were possible thanks to Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, which includes spectra of distant galaxies from the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), and was released immediately to support discoveries like this as part of Webb’s Early Release Science (ERS) program.
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    3 m
  • NASA’s Webb Maps Weather on Planet 280 Light-Years Away

    NASA’s Webb Maps Weather on Planet 280 Light-Years Away
    May 14 2024
    An international team of researchers has successfully used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather on the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b.
    Precise brightness measurements over a broad spectrum of mid-infrared light, combined with 3D climate models and previous observations from other telescopes, suggest the presence of thick, high clouds covering the nightside, clear skies on the dayside, and equatorial winds upwards of 5,000 miles per hour mixing atmospheric gases around the planet.
    The investigation is just the latest demonstration of the exoplanet science now possible with Webb’s extraordinary ability to measure temperature variations and detect atmospheric gases trillions of miles away.
    WASP-43 b is a “hot Jupiter” type of exoplanet: similar in size to Jupiter, made primarily of hydrogen and helium, and much hotter than any of the giant planets in our own solar system. Although its star is smaller and cooler than the Sun, WASP-43 b orbits at a distance of just 1.3 million miles – less than 1/25th the distance between Mercury and the Sun.
    With such a tight orbit, the planet is tidally locked, with one side continuously illuminated and the other in permanent darkness. Although the nightside never receives any direct radiation from the star, strong eastward winds transport heat around from the dayside.
    Since its discovery in 2011, WASP-43 b has been observed with numerous telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and now-retired Spitzer space telescopes.
    “With Hubble, we could clearly see that there is water vapor on the dayside. Both Hubble and Spitzer suggested there might be clouds on the nightside,” explained Taylor Bell, researcher from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and lead author of a study published today in Nature Astronomy. “But we needed more precise measurements from Webb to really begin mapping the temperature, cloud cover, winds, and more detailed atmospheric composition all the way around the planet.”
    Although WASP-43 b is too small, dim, and close to its star for a telescope to see directly, its short orbital period of just 19.5 hours makes it ideal for phase curve spectroscopy, a technique that involves measuring tiny changes in brightness of the star-planet system as the planet orbits the star.
    Since the amount of mid-infrared light given off by an object depends largely on how hot it is, the brightness data captured by Webb can then be used to calculate the planet’s temperature.
    The broad spectrum of mid-infrared light captured by Webb also made it possible to measure the amount of water vapor (H2O) and methane (CH4) around the planet. “Webb has given us an opportunity to figure out exactly which molecules we’re seeing and put some limits on the abundances,” said Joanna Barstow, a co-author from the Open University in the U.K.
    The spectra show clear signs of water vapor on the nightside as well as the dayside of the planet, providing additional information about how thick the clouds are and how high they extend in the atmosphere.
    Surprisingly, the data also shows a distinct lack of methane anywhere in the atmosphere. Although the dayside is too hot for methane to exist (most of the carbon should be in the form of carbon monoxide), methane should be stable and detectable on the cooler nightside.
    “The fact that we don't see methane tells us that WASP-43b must have wind speeds reaching something like 5,000 miles per hour,” explained Barstow. “If winds move gas around from the dayside to the nightside and back again fast enough, there isn’t enough time for the expected chemical reactions to produce detectable amounts of methane on the nightside.”
    The team thinks that because of this wind-driven mixing, the atmospheric chemistry is the same all the way around the planet, which wasn’t apparent from past work with Hubble and Spitzer.
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    4 m
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