James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Astronomers capture the most intricate picture of a galaxy in a thousand colors ever seen (photo, video)

By Robert Lea published 8 hours ago

"The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot. It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure, but at the same time big enough that we can still see it as a whole system."

Says Team leader Enrico Congiu of the Universidad de Chile in a statement.

"It is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system."

 

Covering 65,000 light-years of the 90,000-light-year-wide galaxy, zooming in on the finer details of the Sculptor Galaxy to create this image required 100 exposures collected over 50 hours of MUSE observing time.

 

The team's research was published online today (June 18) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

 

Full Article:

https://www.space.com/astronomy/astronomers-capture-the-most-intricate-picture-of-a-galaxy-in-a-thousand-colors-ever-seen-photo-video

 

Pic Description: 

Astronomers have obtained a stunning new image of the Sculptor Galaxy, painted in thousands of colors that reveals the intricacies of galactic systems.

 

Video link:

https://videos.space.com/m/LT5bpewL/sculptor-galaxy-seen-in-thousands-of-colors-by-the-very-large-telescope?list=9wzCTV4g

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

First images from Vera C. Rubin Observatory released, giving a taste of what's to come

By Ellen Phiddian - 20h ago

 

The images are a taster of what is expected to be unveiled at 1AM AEST Tuesday morning in a live stream that will also include ultra-high definition video.

 

According to astronomers, even these first previews are unlike anything they've ever seen before.

 

Rachel Webster, an astrophysicist at the University of Mebourne, said she was stunned by the vast scale of each picture.

 

"There's just so much going on in each of these images...."

[ED: Some super nice pics in the article! They are too big to post here. Lol]

 

Full Article:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-06-23/first-taste-images-vera-c-rubin-observatory-released/105448868

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

...

"I just look at it and I think: what on Earth is going on there?" Dr Webster said.

"I've never seen a galaxy that looks like that before."

More images to come!

 

The official unveiling happens at 1am (AEST) this Tuesday, June 24.

If you are keen, you can watch the unveiling live on the telescope's website or rug up and go to a watch party in Melbourne, Sydney or Perth.

[ED: See end of article for links]

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

More from Vera

Within just 10 hours, the Rubin Observatory already revealed new discoveries, including 2104 asteroids. The team says that it will be able to discover millions of new asteroids within the first two years of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, compared to 20,000 asteroids discovered annually by all other ground and space-based observatories. You can see all of the asteroids in the short video below.

 

https://m.dpreview.com/news/7841694397/rubin-observatory-shares-the-first-look-from-the-world-s-biggest-camera

 

 

[Approx 1min video showing discoveries - still below showing: 1. 2,000 new discoveries;  2. Slice of heavens explored]

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:01 AM by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

A [1 min] video was also revealed, which offers a unique perspective of what LSST is capable of:

 

 

This is just the start of what we will see from LSST and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Later this year, it will kick off a decade-long survey, which the team is calling the "ultimate movie of the night sky." The Rubin Observatory will scan the sky repeatedly over the course of a decade, resulting in an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse of our Universe.

 

The survey will involve observations of about 40 billion stars, galaxies and other celestial objects. Each object will be checked hundreds of times, resulting in 60 petabytes of raw data, which the Rubin Observatory says is "more data than everything that's ever been written in any language in human history."

 

[Dustparticle]

A new planet 

https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/the-james-webb-space-telescope-has-discovered-its-1st-exoplanet-and-snapped-its-picture-image3

Edited Wednesday at 08:58 PM by Dustparticle

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

NASA's Webb Digs into Structural Origins of Disk Galaxies
June 26, 2025 10:00am  Release ID: 2025-121

 

Summary
Scientists “excavated” disk galaxies across cosmic time to understand their formation history.

Disk galaxies, like our own Milky Way galaxy, commonly consist of both a thick and thin disk of stars — each with different features, including stellar population and movement. Three major theoretical scenarios have been proposed to explain the formation mechanisms and timing of thick and thin disks.

A team of astronomers has recently investigated the structure of disk galaxies by sifting through multiple surveys from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This extensive sample includes over 100 edge-on disk galaxies up to roughly 11 billion years ago. The team’s analysis aligns with one of the three scenarios, suggesting that thick stellar disk formation occurs first, and thin stellar disk formation follows. When this happens in a galaxy’s formation history depends on the galaxy’s mass.

Full Article: 
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-121?utm_id

 

Pic Description: 
Present-day disk galaxies often contain a thick, star-filled outer disk and an embedded thin disk of stars. Three major theoretical scenarios have been proposed by astronomers to explain how this dual-disk structure comes to be. Using archival data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is closer to understanding disk galaxies’ origins, and the stellar thick- and thin-disk formation process. The team carefully identified, visually verified, and analyzed a statistical sample of more than 100 edge-on disk galaxies at various periods — up to 11 billion years ago (or approximately 2.8 billion years after the big bang). The results of their analysis suggest that galaxies form a thick disk first, followed by a thin disk. The timing of this process depends on a galaxy’s mass: high-mass, single-disk galaxies transitioned to two-disk structures around 8 billion years ago, while low-mass, single-disk galaxies formed their thin disks about 4 billion years ago.

Link:

https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01JXX24CYFPGSG7YYXCTV7E7QD.png