At this point it's just pouring in, isn't it:
Here's what we learn when looking at the active galactic nucleus – a supermassive black hole – of the topmost galaxy in Stephan's Quintet with #Webb's #NIRSpec instrument
The instrument’s integral field units (IFUs) – a combination of a camera and spectrograph, pierced through the shroud of dust to measure the bright emission from outflows of hot gas near the active black hole
The instrument saw the gas near the supermassive black hole in wavelengths never detected before, and it was able to determine its composition. Some of the key emission lines seen by #NIRSpec are shown in the image in this thread and represent different phases of gas
Atomic hydrogen, in blue & yellow allows scientists to discover the structure of the outflow. Iron ions, in teal, trace the places where the hot gas is located. Molecular hydrogen, in red, traces both outflowing gas and the reservoir of fuel for the black hole
By using #NIRSpec, scientists have gained unprecedented information about the black hole and its outflow. Studying these relatively nearby galaxies helps scientists better understand galaxy evolution in the much more distant universe
#NIRSpec was built for @esa by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.
A new preprint describes an even higher redshift, z=16.7, galaxy candidate: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.12356
The red wavelength cut-off at 1.6 μm limits HST to redshift around 11, which is when the age of the universe was only ∼420 million years. The NIRCam instrument, the most sensitive camera onboard JWST, extends to 5 μm and will allow for the detection of early objects only several tens of million years after the Big Bang should they exist.
We have a total of 88 such candidates spreading over the two fields, some of which could be at redshifts as high as 20. Neither the high number of such objects found nor the high redshifts they reside at are expected from the previously favored predictions.
In addition to the large sample of candidate galaxies at z 11, our work also shows that there were already galaxies at z ≈ 20, although they are significantly less in number than ∼140 Myr later at z ≈ 11.6. Search for first stars should aim at z > 20.
Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have imaged the most distant star ever observed thanks to a a ripple in spacetime that creates extreme magnification.It’s currently 28 billion light-years away and its light has traveled 12.9 billion years into JWST’s optics. It existed just 900 million years after the big bang in a galaxy astronomers have nicknamed the Sunrise Arc.The image of WHL0137-LS, above, was produced from over three hours of observations last weekend—but it’s not the star you think! Ignore the spiky star and instead go to the lower right-hand side (see below).The ancient star is estimated to have a mass greater than 50 times the mass of the Sun.
1. Make way for the king of the solar system! 👑New Webb images of Jupiter highlight the planet's features, including its turbulent Great Red Spot (shown in white here), in amazing detail. These images were processed by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/08/22/webbs-jupiter-images-showcase-auroras-hazes/
Check out the bright waves, swirls, and vortices in Jupiter’s atmosphere — as well as the dark ring system, one million times fainter than the planet! Two moons of Jupiter, including one that’s only about 12 miles (20 km) across, are on the left.
