Astronomers armed with exceptionally detailed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images have discovered dozens of ancient stars from a distant, gravitationally warped galaxy. The stellar haul, which was uncovered thanks to a space-time phenomenon predicted by Einstein, is the largest of its kind ever seen so far away. The newly imaged stars are located within […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest and most powerful space telescope that humanity has ever created, enabling scientists to gaze further into the universe than ever before. But more impressively, thanks to the (relatively) limited speed of lightthe JWST can effectively peer back in time to the early universe — over 13.5 […]
Since its launch on Christmas Day, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has proven its worth year after year. 2024 is no exception. Here are just five times the ultrapowerful telescope has reshaped our understanding of the universe. Big galaxies (Image credit: NASA/ESA/JWST) The James Webb telescope was designed, in part, to hunt for the […]
What it is: NGC 602, a star cluster. Where it is: 200,000 light-years distant in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. When it was shared: Dec. 17, 2024. Why it’s so special: The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) doesn’t get much attention. It’s only visible from the Southern Hemisphere and is overshadowed by the nearby Large Magellanic […]
NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope includes asteroids on its list of objects studied and secrets revealed. A team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge repurposed Webb’s observations of a distant star to reveal a population of small asteroids — smaller than astronomers had ever detected orbiting the Sun in the […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just solved a 20-year-old mystery about how ancient stars could host massive planets. In the early 2000s, the Hubble Space Telescope observed the oldest planet everan object 2.5 times as large as Jupiter that formed in the Milky Way 13 billion years ago, less than a billion years […]
Researchers just found an unexpected galaxy using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The large swirl of stars is known as a grand-design spiral galaxy, and its exceptionally advanced age could change what we know about galaxy formation. Generally, the older a galaxy is, the farther away it is from us. Scientists can gauge the […]
This new image of star cluster NGC 602, released on Dec. 17, 2024, combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb data provide the ring-like outline of the “wreath,” while X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light […]
Astronomers analyzing archival images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered an unexpectedly vast population of the smallest asteroids ever seen in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The finding could lead to better tracking of the tiny but powerful space rocks that are likely to approach Earth. The newfound asteroids range […]
Mysterious pairs of “rogue,” Jupiter-size objects may have arisen from embryonic stars, a new study suggests. The theory could explain some characteristics of these Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs), such as why members of each pair are so widely separated, but more data is needed to confirm the idea. The James Webb Space Telescope spotted these […]
