James Webb Telescope Updates

[SelfSim]

Klein has been sent to Devil's island penal colony according to IAU law.

Shoulda been banished to a dwarf planet in the outer reaches of the solar system.

 

[sjastro]

Shoulda been banished to a dwarf planet in the outer reaches of the solar system.

While Spanish sausages don't exist in outer space cosmic hamburgers do!

​

NGC 3628: The Hamburger Galaxy | Science Mission Directorate

Our resident science and IAU hater will be pleased with this.

The faraway sights observed nightly by astronomers are exotic, beautiful and often poorly understood.
Perhaps the urge to cope with the unknown explains why so many homespun names have been coined by them, in conscious rebellion against the cold alphanumerics of catalogue designations endorsed by the IAU.

NASA however are in the firing line for using nicknames deemed insensitive such as the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twin Galaxy and will revert to the evil IAU designations NGC 2392 and NGC 4567/68 respectively.

"These nicknames and terms may have historical or culture connotations that are objectionable or unwelcoming, and NASA is strongly committed to addressing them," said Stephen Shih, associate administrator for Diversity and Equal Opportunity. "Science depends on diverse contributions, and benefits everyone, so this means we must make it inclusive.”

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-reexamine-nicknames-for-cosmic-objects

 

[SelfSim]

While Spanish sausages don't exist in outer space cosmic hamburgers do!
...
NASA however are in the firing line for using nicknames deemed insensitive such as the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twin Galaxy and will revert to the evil IAU designations NGC 2392 and NGC 4567/68 respectively.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-reexamine-nicknames-for-cosmic-objects​

Yeah .. I reckon this "Maisie's' Galaxy" for the z~13 (14.3?) one posted previously, is highly dodgy too (for different reasons).
"Maisie's galaxy" was apparently named that way in honor of project head Steven Finkelstein's daughter .. which I get, (and is marginal).
But when he names it that in the paper's abstract, it puts it completely over the top, IMO:

Following conservative vetting criteria, we identify a robust source at z_phot=14.3 (+0.4, -1.1, 1-sig uncertainty) with F277W=27.8, and detections in five (two) filters at >5sig (>10sig) significance. This object (dubbed Maisie's Galaxy) exhibits a strong F150W-F200W Lyman-alpha break color ...

 

[That Guy 11200]

Yeah .. I reckon this "Maisie's' Galaxy" for the z~13 (14.3?) one posted previously, is highly dodgy too (for different reasons).
"Maisie's galaxy" was apparently named that way in honor of project head Steven Finkelstein's daughter .. which I get, (and is marginal).
But when he names it that in the paper's abstract, it puts it completely over the top, IMO:

That's ArXiv. Who cares what they (he isn't the only author) put in an abstract on ArXiv?

More than that, who would care about that being in an abstract in an actual journal?

 

[SelfSim]

That's ArXiv. Who cares what they (he isn't the only author) put in an abstract on ArXiv?

Me.
Submitted July 25 (2022) and already 13 papers referencing it, according to NASA Ads

 

[sjastro]

My favourite object name is Baxendell's Unphotographable Nebula.

NGC 7088 = Ced 193, 21 hr 33.4 m, -0.23'.
Seen by J. Baxendell in 1880 as a very large diffuse nebulosity, 52' by 75', lying north of the globular cluster M2.
Confirmed visually J.L.E Dreyer (10 inch refractor) and listed by Cederblad, even though it seems not to exist.

Ironically it was J.L.E Dreyer who compiled the New General Catalogue (NGC) which the IAU use and is still in the records.
Who said astronomers don't have a sense of humour.

 

[That Guy 11200]

Me.
Submitted July 25 (2022) and already 13 papers referencing it, according to NASA Ads

It's a rather petty thing to care about.

 

[SelfSim]

It's a rather petty thing to care about.

That's rather opinionated of you don't you think?

 

[SelfSim]

Who said astronomers don't have a sense of humour.

Who said astronomers don't drink, too?

 

[That Guy 11200]

That's rather opinionated of you don't you think?

And? Is having opinions a bad thing now?

Papers often refer to things using a name other than the formal designation: in the title, in the abstract and in the main body of text. I'm amused that it seems to matter to you.

 

[SelfSim]

And? Is having opinions a bad thing now?

Papers often refer to things using a name other than the formal designation: in the title, in the abstract and in the main body of text. I'm amused that it seems to matter to you.

Attempted thread hijack(?) Let's just get back to JWST Updates, eh?

 

[That Guy 11200]

Attempted thread hijack(?) Let's just get back to JWST Updates, eh?

You posted, I replied.

 

[Halbhh]

Reminds of the wonderful simulations of galaxy collisions. While I was looking one up, I also noticed this interesting post at NASA about another aspect, the new star formation, really highlighted here:

A spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy, as captured in a new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The interacting galaxy duo is collectively called Arp 143. The pair contains the glittery, distorted, star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2445 at right, along with its less flashy companion, NGC 2444 at left.

Astronomers suggest that the galaxies passed through each other, igniting the uniquely shaped star-formation firestorm in NGC 2445, where thousands of stars are bursting to life on the right-hand side of the image. This galaxy is awash in starbirth because it is rich in gas, the fuel that makes stars. However, it hasn’t yet escaped the gravitational clutches of its partner NGC 2444, shown on the left side of the image. The pair is waging a cosmic tug-of-war, which NGC 2444 appears to be winning. The galaxy has pulled gas from NGC 2445, forming the oddball triangle of newly minted stars.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/galaxy-collision-creates-space-triangle-in-new-hubble-image

I'll try to find a nice animation of galaxy collision next.

NASA however are in the firing line for using nicknames deemed insensitive such as the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twin Galaxy and will revert to the evil IAU designations NGC 2392 and NGC 4567/68 respectively.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-reexamine-nicknames-for-cosmic-objects

 

[Halbhh]

Simulation of the formation of the galaxy known as "The Mice." The simulation depicts the merger of two spiral galaxies, pausing and rotating at the stage resembling the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys image of "The Mice," dissolving to that image, and continuing on to finish the merger. Simulation By: Josh Barnes (University of Hawaii) and John Hibbard (National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

 

[Halbhh]

The James Webb Space Telescope has only been watching the sky for a few weeks, and it has already delivered a startling finding: tens, hundreds, maybe even 1000 times more bright galaxies in the early universe than astronomers anticipated.

“No one was expecting anything like this,” says Michael Boylan-Kolchin of the University of Texas, Austin. “Galaxies are exploding out of the woodwork,” says Rachel Somerville of the Flatiron Institute.

Galaxy formation models may now need a revision, as current ones hold that gas clouds should be far slower to coalesce into stars and galaxies than is suggested by Webb’s galaxy-rich images of the early universe, less than 500 million years after the big bang. “This is way outside the box of what models were predicting,” says Garth Illingworth of the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz.

Within days after Webb began observations, it spotted a candidate galaxy that appears to have been shining brightly when the universe was just 230 million years old, 1.7% of its current age, which would make it the most distant ever seen. Surveys since then have shown that object is just one of a stunning profusion of early galaxies, each small by today’s standards, but more luminous than astronomers had expected.

It is also possible that astronomers are misidentifying galaxies from slightly more recent times as very early ones. Spectra are the gold standard for gauging a galaxy’s age because they allow the reddening of its light to be measured precisely. But gathering spectra from many galaxies takes time. Instead, Webb surveys so far have estimated galaxy ages from the color they appear in images—a relatively crude method. Webb’s near-infrared camera filters their light into a few wide wavelength bins, giving astronomers a rough measurement of color; redder equals more distant. But dust surrounding a galaxy can fool observers, as it can absorb starlight and re-emit it at longer wavelengths, making the galaxy look redder.

Webb’s early science teams have already identified a few such masquerading galaxies, as they report in several recent preprints. But if the profusion of early galaxies is real, astronomers may have to fundamentally rethink galaxy formation or the reigning cosmology.

Viewing nearby galaxies, researchers have concluded that heat within gas clouds slows how quickly gravity would otherwise condense the matter into stars—making star formation take about 100 times longer than if gravity alone was in charge. As the first stars in a protogalaxy begin to shine, they inject more heat into the gas, pumping the brakes on further star formation. And the first stars are short-lived giants; when they explode as supernovae they heat up gas clouds even more or blast them out of a forming galaxy completely.

(continues....)
Science | AAAS

 

[Green Sun]

NASA released absolutely breathtaking photographs of Jupiter on Monday.

Webb’s Jupiter Images Showcase Auroras, Hazes – James Webb Space Telescope

The two images come from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.

In the standalone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several images from Webb, auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud.

The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.

In a wide-field view, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.

 

[essentialsaltes]

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

This image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in different bands of infrared light, as seen from the James Webb Space Telescope: purple shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 3.00 micrometers, blue shows the NIRCam instrument’s view at 4.44 micrometers, yellow shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 11.4 micrometers, and red shows the MIRI instrument’s view at 15.5 micrometers. These images look different because of the ways the different Webb instruments capture light. A set of masks within each instrument, called a coronagraph, blocks out the host star’s light so that the planet can be seen. The small white star in each image marks the location of the host star HIP 65426, which has been subtracted using the coronagraphs and image processing. The bar shapes in the NIRCam images are artifacts of the telescope’s optics, not objects in the scene.

 

[Halbhh]

The most dramatic observation so far (by far) is seeing a lot of too bright (too large), too early galaxies (showing up far sooner than thought possible), totally unexpected mature-looking earlier galaxies:

JWST’s First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology

"...projections estimated the first galaxies would be so small and faint that JWST would find at best a few intriguingly remote candidates in its pilot investigations. Things didn’t quite go as planned. Instead, as soon as the telescope’s scientists released its very first images of the distant universe, astronomers like Naidu (at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) started finding numerous galaxies within them that, in apparent age, size and luminosity, surpassed all predictions. The competition for discovery was fierce: with each new day, it seemed, claims of yet another record-breaking “earliest known galaxy” would emerge from one research group or another. “Everyone was freaking out,” says Charlotte Mason, an astrophysicist at the University of Copenhagen. “We really weren’t expecting this.”

In the weeks and months following JWST’s findings of surprisingly mature “early” galaxies, blindsided theorists and observers alike have been scrambling to explain them. Could the bevy of anomalously big and bright early galaxies be illusory, perhaps because of flaws in analysis of the telescope’s initial observations? If genuine, could they somehow be explained by standard cosmological models? Or, just maybe, were they the first hints that the universe is more strange and complex than even our boldest theories had supposed?

At stake is nothing less than our very understanding of how the orderly universe we know emerged from primordial chaos. JWST’s early revelations could be poised to rewrite the opening chapters of cosmic history, which concern not only distant epochs and faraway galaxies but also our own existence here, in the familiar Milky Way. “You build these machines not to confirm the paradigm, but to break it,” says JWST scientist Mark McCaughrean, a senior advisor for science and exploration at the European Space Agency. “You just don’t know how it will break.”

(continues...)

JWST’s First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology

 

[Halbhh]

The short wait for the most interesting thing:

Before the first major images released on July 12th, I was looking forward in particular, more than anything else for seeing eelier galaxies.

As I wrote above back then:

(June 24th
"Here's one that is really interesting to me:

"For decades, telescopes have helped us capture light from galaxies that formed as far back as 400 million years after the big bang—incredibly early in the context of the universe's 13.8-billion-year history. But what were galaxies like that existed even earlier ... With Webb's observations, researchers will be able to tell us about the makeup and composition of individual galaxies in the early universe for the first time."

Never yet observed even earlier-in-time galaxies. The early galaxies we have seen in recent years surprised us already, just for forming sooner than had been expected, showing previous ideas about when galaxies first formed were incorrect.
​

I didn't know that this would become 1 of the 2 most compelling goals astronomers are eager now here in October to pursue above all other observing goals (even tied or probably exceeding interest in exoplanet atmospheres).

So, that now many groups and future observations are focused on early galaxies in particular, above other goals. How delightful!

You don't always get soon what you'd like the most, but usually have to wait for long years. That wait is now going to be very much shorter.

​

Here's a great article I saw yesterday, with more exciting detail imo, about some observing goals:

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-nasa-webb-uncover-riches-early.html

Here's one that is really interesting to me:

For decades, telescopes have helped us capture light from galaxies that formed as far back as 400 million years after the big bang—incredibly early in the context of the universe's 13.8-billion-year history. But what were galaxies like that existed even earlier, when the universe was semi-transparent at the beginning of a period known as the Era of Reionization? NASA's next flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, is poised to add new riches to our wealth of knowledge not only by capturing images from galaxies that existed as early as the first few hundred million years after the big bang, but also by giving us detailed data known as spectra. With Webb's observations, researchers will be able to tell us about the makeup and composition of individual galaxies in the early universe for the first time.

Never yet observed even earlier-in-time galaxies. The early galaxies we have seen in recent years surprised us already, just for forming sooner than had been expected, showing previous ideas about when galaxies first formed were incorrect.

 

[sjastro]

Now this is impressive.

The image in the top left hand corner is the Hubble image of the quasar with the sensationally catchy name of SDSS J165202.64+172852.3 which is insignificant in appearance when compared to the Webb images.
The Webb images show the Doppler shifted gas from the galaxy cluster with a doubly ionized oxygen component which was mistaken by scientists from the late 19th to early 20th century as the mysterious element Nebulium.

Motions of Gas Around an Extremely Red Quasar (NIRSpec IFU)