James Webb Space Telescope

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[Icarus]

^^    

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NASA's Webb Takes Its First-Ever Direct Image of Distant World

"For the first time, astronomers have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable.

The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb's powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets."

Amazing.

[billy rubin]

"For the first time, astronomers have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable.

maybe not.

remember nivens integral trees?

you need an atmosphere, but a substrate is not required, theoretically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees

No "ground" exists in the Smoke Ring; it consists entirely of sky. Furthermore, the Smoke Ring is in orbit and therefore in free fall: there is no "up" or "down". Most animals have trilateral symmetry that allows them to see in all directions. The majority of Smoke Ring animals have evolved to fly on at least an occasional basis—even the fish. The Smoke Ring contains numerous "ponds," globs of water of various sizes which float free like everything else. While there are aquatic and amphibious animals in the Smoke Ring that live the majority of their lives in such ponds, these animals may find their habitat unsuitable at any moment. Whether their home pond drifts too far out of the habitable center of the Smoke Ring and into the gas torus, becomes too large and breaks up due to tidal forces, or impacts a large object such as an integral tree, aquatic animals must be able to propel themselves through the air sometimes in order to find a new place to live.

[Recusant]

Cosmic smoke rings. 

"Alien megastructures? Cosmic thumbprint? What's behind a James Webb telescope photo that had even astronomers stumped" | The Conversation

In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of "cosmic thumbprint", came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's newest flagship observatory.

The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some on the wild fringe even claimed it as evidence for "alien megastructures" of unknown origin.

Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years – so we were in prime position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing.

Our model, published in Nature, explains the strange process by which the star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now published in Nature Astronomy).

WR140 is what's called a Wolf-Rayet star. These are among the most extreme stars known. In a rare but beautiful display, they can sometimes emit a plume of dust into space stretching hundreds of times the size of our entire Solar System.

The radiation field around Wolf-Rayets is so intense, dust and wind are swept outwards at thousands of kilometres per second, or about 1% the speed of light. While all stars have stellar winds, these overachievers drive something more like a stellar hurricane.

Critically, this wind contains elements such as carbon that stream out to form dust.

WR140 is one of a few dusty Wolf-Rayet stars found in a binary system. It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own.

Only a handful of systems like WR140 are known in our whole galaxy, yet these select few deliver the most unexpected and beautiful gift to astronomers. Dust doesn't simply stream out from the star to form a hazy ball as might be expected; instead it forms only in a cone-shaped area where the winds from the two stars collide.

Because the binary star is in constant orbital motion, this shock front must also rotate. The sooty plume then naturally gets wrapped into a spiral, in the same way as the jet from a rotating garden sprinkler.

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Two papers are available:

"Radiation-driven acceleration in the expanding WR140 dust shell" | Nature

"Nested dust shells around the Wolf–Rayet binary WR 140 observed with JWST" | Nature Astronomy

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Wow!

[Recusant]

Yeah, it's a great time for astronomy. 

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Possibly the greatest time ever? We have great theories to test and the best telescopes that have ever existed.

[Dark Lightning]

Something that was never mentioned in my solar system astrophysics class. We've learned a lot in the last 40 years.

[Asmodean]

JWST... 

Just What Satan Thought.
Journalism Without Scare Tactics.
Jammed Watch Still Ticking.
Juicy Wiener Schnitzel Toast. The Asmo now wants.

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It just keeps getting better and better!

James Webb telescope spies 'Pillars of Creation'

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This link has a comparison to the Hubble image which is a good illustration of the visible vs infra-red spectrum images.

Iconic 'Pillars of Creation' captured in new Webb image

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It's starting to do what it was specifically designed for.

JWST reveals birth of galaxies, how universe became transparent

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James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before

A step towards the possible confirmation of alien life.

[billy rubin]

is that cool or what