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Items tagged with: JWST

New JWST image just dropped.

This object is called Herbig-Haro 49/50. It's the outflow of a still-forming star hidden from view to the lower right of the orangish cone of material oriented diagonally in this image.

As stars form they eject excess matter in the direction of their poles of rotation. That material encounters the interstellar medium in the vicinity and lights up in response. "Like the wake of a speeding boat, the bow shocks in this image have an arc-like appearance as the fast-moving jet from the young star slams into the surrounding dust and gas."

Purely by coincidence, the outflow lines up with a distant background galaxy, which is the circular pinkish/blue object at upper left.

More info about the image: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb…

#Astronomy #Stars #StarFormation #Astrophysics #JWST #SpaceTelescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. Like the wake of a speeding boat, the bow shocks in this image have an arc-like appearance as the fast-moving jet from the young star slams into the surrounding dust and gas. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object with a more distant spiral galaxy in the background. Herbig-Haro 49/50 gives researchers insights into the early phases of the formation of low-mass stars similar to our own Sun. In this Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

NASA’s Webb Telescope Unmasks True Nature of the Cosmic Tornado

Craving an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top? This random alignment of Herbig-Haro 49/50 — a frothy-looking outflow from a nearby protostar — with a
NASA Webb Mission Team (NASA Science)
#astronomy #astrophysics #jwst #stars #starformation #spacetelescope

#jwst

Did you see the news that all of the #JWST instruments are aligned now?

Check out this comparison of one of the newly released calibration images from the MIRI instrument compared to images taken of the same region of space by the WISE and Spitzer space telescopes! Look at that resolution! So many newly resolved stars and structures! 🤩

I can't wait for all the new discoveries we'll make with JWST! #Science data starts in only a couple months!

(Image from @/AndrasGasper on birdapp)

A comparison of what three different infrared space telescopes saw when looking at the same region of Space. From left to right are images from WISE, Spitzer, and JWST. Images gain resolution as you move from left to right, revealing new stars and gaseous structures. The JWST image is a calibration image and not a final science image.
#science #jwst

By now you might be wondering: Why is the telescope #gold?

The mirrors are actually made of Beryllium, which is a very strong and lightweight metal, and are coated in a very thin layer of gold. The total amount of gold on #JWST is only about the size of a marble!

Why gold? Gold is VERY efficient at reflecting infrared light! JWST is designed to search for this heat in the early universe

A picture of JWST in the clean room with people wearing clean suits surrounding it. The NASA logo is reflected in the gold mirror
#jwst #gold

#science #scicomm #jwst

Fun Fact #1: #JWST is the LARGEST space telescope ever built! It's so big that the mirrors were folded up to fit in the #ESA #Ariane5 #Rocket that launched it last Christmas

(Yes, this diagram of me standing next to the Hubble and JWST mirrors is to scale!)

A diagram showing how tall Erin is compared to the Hubble and JWST mirrors. Erin is 5.4 feet tall, Hubble has a diameter of 7.9 feet, and JWST has a diameter of 21.3 feet!
#jwst #esa #rocket #Ariane5

#science #scicomm #astronomy #astrophysics #jwst #nasa #telescope #MastodonNewbie #exoplanets

Unlike the #Hubble Space Telescope, #JWST is not orbiting Earth! Because it's designed to look for faint heat in the early universe, it has to be far away so that the Earth's heat doesn't overpower what it's observing!

JWST is orbiting a point in space called L2, a gravitationally stable point nearly a million miles beyond Earth.

In this gif, the sun is at the center, Earth is the large blue dot, and you can see JWST orbiting an empty point in space beyond Earth. This is not to scale!

#jwst #hubble

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