James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Hubble Images a Peculiar Spiral

2 May 2025

 

A beautiful but skewed spiral galaxy dazzles in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy, called Arp 184 or NGC 1961, sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

 

The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. It holds 338 galaxies that are oddly shaped and tend to be neither entirely elliptical nor entirely spiral-shaped. Many of the galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalog thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars, but it lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.

 

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-images-a-peculiar-spiral/

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JWST’s most ambitious view

5 May 2025

The COSMOS-Web survey is now complete, combining JWST and Hubble infrared data. Its spectacular views show us the Universe as never before.

 

Key Takeaways

Back in 2021, proposals for JWST time were ranked and chosen, with the greatest amount of telescope time going to a large, deep, wide-field survey project: COSMOS-Web. 

 

Designed to map out galaxies, galaxy groups, galaxy clusters, and the diffuse, extended stellar halos around galaxies to the greatest precision ever, the public has long awaited its release.

 

At last, the survey has now been completed and the full, 166 megapixel image of this region of space is now available to all, revealing the Universe as never before. 

 

[Lots of nice photos, video-clips and diagrams highlighting some awe-inspiring features of our universe in the link below. Enjoy!]

 

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-most-ambitious-view/

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New Visualization ... Explores Cosmic Cliffs

May 07, 2025 2:00 pm Release ID: 2025-123

 

Summary

Iconic Webb image transforms into a 3D landscape of gas, dust, and stars.

 

Powerful observatories like the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes have captured hundreds of vivid images of the cosmos. Yet even the most stunning images are a 2D representation of a 3D universe. It becomes difficult to get a sense of the true scale and structure of what we’re seeing.

 

By combining real data with scientific expertise and a dash of artistic license, a visualization team from NASA’s Universe of Learning has transformed one of Webb’s first images, the Cosmic Cliffs, into a 3D panorama. Viewers are invited to journey through this realm of dusty peaks and valleys.

 

Full Article:

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-123#section-id-2

 

Pic Description: 

The landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” known as the Cosmic Cliffs is actually a portion of the nebula Gum 31, which contains a young star cluster called NGC 3324. Both Gum 31 and NGC 3324 are part of a vast star-forming region known as the Carina Nebula Complex.

 

Video link [1 of 3 in article]:

 

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NASA's Hubble Pinpoints Roaming Massive Black Hole

Released: Thursday, May 8, 2025 10am

 

Wandering black hole ate a star that got in its way.

 

The Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a sneaky black hole that betrayed its presence in a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE), where a hapless star was ripped apart and swallowed in a spectacular burst of radiation. Unlike previously observed TDEs, which took place in the center of a galaxy, this event was thousands of light-years from its galactic center. This is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys, and it opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys.

 

The TDE black hole is far enough away from the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole that they are not gravitationally bound to each other as a binary pair. And, astronomers don’t know if the roaming black hole is coming or going. Did it fall into the galaxy as a result of a merger between two galaxies? Or was it kicked out of a “wresting ring” where three supermassive black hole dynamically interacted?

 

Read more:

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-pinpoints-roaming-massive-black-hole/

 

Pic Description:

This six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive black hole shows the following:

1) A supermassive black hole is adrift inside a galaxy, its presence only detectable by gravitational lensing; 

2) A wayward star gets swept up in the black hole's intense gravitational pull; 

3) The star is stretched or "spaghettified" by gravitational tidal effects; 

4) The star's remnants form a disk around the black hole; 

5) There is a period of black hole accretion, pouring out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to radio wavelengths; and 

6) The host galaxy, seen from afar, contains a bright flash of energy that is offset from the galaxy's nucleus, where an even more massive black hole dwells.

Artwork: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

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Hubble Comes Face-to-Face with Spiral’s Arms

NASA Hubble Team Goddard Space Flight Center

May 09, 2025

 

NGC 3596 appears almost perfectly face-on when viewed from Earth, showcasing the galaxy’s neatly wound spiral arms. These bright arms hold concentrations of stars, gas, and dust that mark the area where star formation is most active, illustrated by the brilliant pink star-forming regions and young blue stars tracing NGC 3596’s arms.

 

What causes these spiral arms to form? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, partly because spiral galaxies are so diverse. Some have clear spiral arms, while others have patchy, feathery arms. Some have prominent bars across their centers, while others have compact, circular nuclei. Some have close neighbors, while others are isolated.

 

Link:

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-comes-face-to-face-with-spirals-arms/

 

Pic Description:

This Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the spiral galaxy NGC 3596.

 

 

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Capturing Candyfloss Clouds

Release date: 12 May 2025, 06:00am ID: potw2519a

 

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbours, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Located 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.

 

This view of dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud is possible thanks to Hubble’s cameras, such as the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that was used to collect the observations for this image. WFC3 is equipped with a variety of filters, each of which lets through only specific wavelengths, or colours, of light. This image combines observations made with five different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that the human eye cannot see...

Read more:

https://esahubble.org/images/potw2519a

 

Pic Description: 

A part of a nebula in space. It is made of layers of gas and dust clouds in different colours, from blue and green shades to pink, red and black, indicating light emitted by different molecules. The background cloud layers are thicker and puffier, though still translucent, and the upper layers are thin and bright at the edges. Behind the clouds are very many small, mostly orange and some blue, stars.

 

Edited May 13 by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[careful]

has the james webb space telescope ever captured images that   conspiracy theorists use to back up ufo claims?

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I have read that some believe that our Universe all happened by pure chance. Common sense tell us every house has a builder...

So it wouldn't surprise me if some conspiracy theorists have some outlandish ideas. And no doubt, AI has been a tool to embellish/create "UFO" claims (now called UAP's).

Either way, the pictures are still pretty imo.

Edited May 14 by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

 

Another First: NASA Webb Identifies Frozen Water in Young Star System

May 14, 2025 11:00am Release ID: 2025-119

 

Summary

Researchers found water ice throughout a dusty debris disk circling the Sun-like star HD 181327.

 

We know water in its solid state — ice — exists on moons orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Telescopes have also spotted frozen water on dwarf planets, comets, and other bits of rock that “hang out” in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system. But for decades, water ice was not confirmed to exist around other stars.

 

The James Webb Space Telescope has unequivocally changed that: Data from its NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) confirmed the presence of water ice in a dusty debris disk that surrounds a star known as HD 181327.

 

Water ice heavily influences the formation of giant planets and may also be delivered by comets to fully formed rocky planets. Now that researchers have detected water ice with Webb, they have opened the door to studying how these processes play out in new ways — in many other planetary systems — for all researchers.

 

Pic Description:

For the first time, researchers confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a dusty debris disk that orbits a Sun-like star, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. All the frozen water detected by Webb is paired with fine dust particles throughout the disk. The majority of the water ice observed is found where it’s coldest and farthest from the star. The closer to the star the researchers looked, the less water ice they found.

 

Full Article:

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-119

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The 2025 Milky Way photographer of the year

Photographing the Milky Way is a journey through time, space, and imagination.

 

While we can only see a small part of the Milky Way with our own eyes, photography allows us to uncover its hidden beauty—showing details, colors, and patterns in the night sky that usually go unnoticed. But beyond the camera and technique, it’s the photographer’s creativity, patience, and sense of wonder that truly bring these images to life.

 

View pics and read more here:

https://capturetheatlas.com/milky-way-photographer-of-the-year/

 

 

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 JWST breaks its own record.

May 21, 2025

The new most distant galaxy is MoM-z14.

Coming in from just 280 million years after the Big Bang (or 98% of cosmic history ago) this new massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.

 

Key Takeaways

● While many telescopes, including Hubble, ALMA, and JWST, can identify ultra-distant candidate galaxies, a definitive spectrum is needed to pin down just how ancient a galaxy’s light truly is. 

● Back in 2022, Hubble held the record for most distant galaxy with GN-z11. Today, in 2025, that galaxy isn’t even in the top 10, with newly measured galaxy MoM-z14 breaking the prior JWST record. 

● This isn’t just the most distant galaxy ever found, but an unusual one: it’s compact, bright, and forming stars in a burst, with no evidence for supermassive black hole activity. So how did it form?

 

No matter how well we think we understand the Universe, there’s always something new out there to discover. After all, astronomy is the study of the Universe as we observe it to be, and as we build superior instruments and telescopes, we’re bound to notice details, objects, and even phenomena that couldn’t be revealed with the tools of prior generations. In many regards, it was only with the advent of space telescope technology — including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope — that we began to understand what the Universe looked like. Now, here in the 2020s, it’s the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that’s taking us beyond all of Hubble’s prior limits, discovering fainter, more distant, more primitive, and younger objects in the Universe than ever before.

 

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-breaks-record-most-distant-galaxy-mom-z14/

 

Pic Description:

This image shows a three-filter NIRCam view of galaxy MoM-z14: the new record holder (as of May 16, 2025) for the most distant galaxy ever discovered. Invisible at wavelengths below 1.8 microns, JWST has measured its spectrum and detected several emission lines, cementing its status as arising from when the Universe was a mere 282 million years old.

 

[Mike047]

The JWST is a phenomenal piece of equipment, giving us greater insight, but also reminding us of the awesomeness of the universe. One reference states that this galaxy is now located at a distance of some 33.8 billion years away from us, making it the most distant object in the universe discovered so far.