Behold: one of the largest panoramas from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released to date. This busy and breathtaking image offers a remarkably detailed view of IC 348, a nearby stellar nursery where astronomers are investigating some of the smallest objects produced by star formation. IC 348 is one of the closest stellar nurseries to Earth and appears in this near-infrared image as an intricate landscape of stars, glowing material and sweeping clouds of gas and dust. Across the scene, young stars punctuate the dark and luminous clouds. The concentration is greatest around the center, where bright stars show JWST's distinctive diffraction spikes — a result of the telescope's optical structure. In the upper-right of the image, still-forming protostars launch streams of material. And lurking all around this colorful nursery are strange objects that challenge the very definition of a star. Stars come in all shapes and sizes, from massive stars that explode as supernovas after only a few million years to the smallest and most common stars, red dwarfs, which last for many billions of years. However, there is also a class of substellar objects called brown dwarfs — objects halfway between giant gas planets, like Jupiter, and...

NASA is moving forward with designing a new space telescope that can see even deeper into the infrared universe than the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can. The new mission, called PRIMA (Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics), is continuing its development to Phase B — the preliminary design and tech phase — according to a NASA statement. Managers will review the mission's progress before officially beginning the telescope's journey to launch; if all goes to plan, PRIMA will embark on a five-year mission no earlier than 2033. PRIMA's objective is to use a 5.9-foot [1.8 meters] telescope to examine the cosmos in the far-infrared, in a different set of wavelengths than the more famous JWST, which launched in 2021. (Other telescopes, such as Hubble and the newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, can also see some infrared wavelengths, but JWST was specifically designed to detect near- and mid-infrared light.) PRIMA's mission focus will be to uncover more information about exoplanet origins, galaxy growth and black hole evolution. "The key science questions that PRIMA aims to address in relation to planet formation are to quantify the role of water in driving planet formation, [and to] determine the total gas masses...

The rings around a strange small body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus look mysteriously different from previous views, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggest. The rings encircle Chariklo, which is a centaur, a strange type of object that shows characteristics of both asteroids and comets. Chariklo is only about 400 miles (250 kilometers) in diameter and is part of a large group of tiny objects in the distant solar system. Scientists first discovered Chariklo's rings in 2013 — making it the first small solar system body found to have rings — and studied them with ground-based telescopes again in 2014 and 2017. When JWST took another look at Chariklo in 2022, a decade had brought a lot of difference, according to a study published Sept. 9 in the journal Science Advances. "By comparing JWST observations with those obtained … over the last decade, we discovered opposite changes in the two rings: while the inner ring shows significantly higher opacity, the outer ring shows lower opacity, " Pablo Santos-Sanz, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and first author of the study, said in a statement. Researchers don't know exactly how the changes took place,...

It looks like a gigantic treasure chest left open among the stars — but instead of gold and jewels, this strange cosmic structure contains dozens of newborn suns. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals the aptly named Treasure Chest, a colorful cloud of gas and dust in the Carina Nebula, one of the Milky Way's richest star-forming regions. Located about 7,500 light-years away in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Carina, the nebula stretches roughly 260 light-years across and contains some of the most massive stars in our galaxy, as well as tens of thousands of young protostars. It's also home to the "Cosmic Cliffs," which appeared in JWST's first collection of science images, released in 2022. The Treasure Chest is a cometary globule, an isolated cloud with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail. Although such objects are named for their resemblance to comets, this one looks more like a wooden chest with its lid propped open and light spilling from inside. JWST's Near-Infrared Camera reveals the source of that glow: a compact cluster of about 70 young stars embedded in the dust. The most massive one is a rare O-type star — extremely large,...

Recent searches for the technosignatures of hypothetical Dyson Spheres again turn up empty.

Recent searches for the technosignatures of hypothetical Dyson Spheres again turn up empty.

Recent searches for the technosignatures of hypothetical Dyson Spheres again turn up empty.

The latest Swedish-led search for technosignatures in the form of Dyson Spheres has again come up empty-handed. The two latest stellar candidates in the hunt for such hypothetical extraterrestrial technology have been eliminated as Dyson Spheres. Project Hephaistos, an Uppsala University-led initiative, used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to observe two new Dyson Sphere candidates. The Webb telescope took imaging and spectroscopy of two M-dwarf stars, as noted in two papers recently submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures constructed around stars to harvest radiation energy, possibly for the purpose of powering habitats, vessel propulsion, computing or transmitting long-range signals, the MNRAS authors note. The primary technosignature of such structures is the waste heat emitted, usually assumed to be detectable as excess radiation in the infrared, they write. Most of such putative waste heat emissions would show up in the mid-infrared spectrum. We find that the infrared excess does not originate from Dysonian megastructures, or other radiation mechanisms close to these stars, but from background galaxies projected to be within an arcsec of the M dwarfs, the MNRAS papers’ authors write. One has a mid-infrared spectrum consistent with being a...

The latest 12-hour delta reveals a dynamic interplay of systemic re-evaluation, material innovation, and computational augmentation, converging into a state of flux coherence and **Spectral Alignme...

This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of NGC 2392, a planetary nebula commonly known as the Lion Nebula, revealing the cosmic object in striking infrared detail. The Hubble Space Telescope previously observed the nebula in 2000, imaging the lion face-shaped target in visible light. Those observations highlighted its distinctive appearance, including a “mane” made up of hazy structures resembling comet tails. Webb’s high-resolution instruments now provide an even sharper look at the same object. Webb Reveals Hidden Details in the Lion Nebula In broad terms, the Lion Nebula looks similar in Webb’s infrared observations to the structure seen earlier by Hubble. Webb observed it with both NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument). Its infrared capabilities, however, bring out features that are harder to see in visible light, including dense concentrations of dust and hazy regions of ionized gas. The gas and dust now forming the nebula have been evolving for several thousand years. Even today, those materials continue to shift and change. At the center of this activity are the remains of a dying star. In the lion-shaped appearance of the nebula, this stellar remnant resembles a small button nose. Despite its modest appearance,...

Here's why some of the observatory's solar system pictures are ugly.

Astronomers have discovered a close pair of actively feeding supermassive black holes, seen when the universe was just 1.3 billion years old. Collectively known as LID-1166, the two monsters are separated by only about 4,900 light-years (1.5 kiloparsecs) inside a merging galaxy, offering the first clear view of a phase that's critical for understanding the growth of supermassive black holes. Most large galaxies we can see formed over billions of years by merging with other galaxies. Most galaxies also have central black holes, so a merger between them would produce a system with two black holes. These "dual black hole" systems are thought to be common in the early universe. However, given that they're buried in dense gas and dust, these black holes are too close to be observed separately. In a new study uploaded to the arXiv preprint server July 21, Hyewon Suh, an astronomer at the International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab, and colleagues reported the discovery of the closest-together dual black hole system ever confirmed this early in the universe's history. The team used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a collection of radio telescopes in Chile, to study this system. The...

Webb found a hidden giant planet by detecting its atmospheric chemistry through a bright debris disk. For years, a third giant planet remained concealed within the bright dust surrounding Beta Pictoris, one of the most closely observed planetary systems in the Milky Way. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has now exposed the hidden world by detecting molecules in its atmosphere. The young star was already known to host Beta Pictoris b, one of the earliest exoplanets captured through direct imaging, and Beta Pictoris c. The addition of Beta Pictoris d makes Beta Pictoris only the second known system with at least three imaged planets. Unlike its two companions, the new planet was initially recognized through its atmospheric chemical signature rather than as a distinct point of light, demonstrating a potentially valuable way to find other difficult-to-see worlds. “This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system,” said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that...

The nearby young star Beta Pictoris was already known to have two massive planets, Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c. Beta Pictoris b was among the first exoplanets ever photographed directly. The newly confirmed Beta Pictoris d raises the system's known planet count to three, making Beta Pictoris only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. However, astronomers did not initially recognize Beta Pictoris d as a bright point of light. Instead, they identified it through the distinctive chemical signature of its atmosphere. Researchers say this approach could offer a powerful new way to locate planets around other stars, particularly in environments where dust and debris make conventional imaging difficult. "This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system," said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story." A Young Planetary System Close to Earth Beta Pictoris is about 63 light-years from Earth and is estimated to be...

Around 100 years ago, Albert Einstein made an audacious prediction about space. The frequently right (but occasionally wrong) physicist theorized that, just as the curved lens of a magnifying glass bends light to increase an object's apparent size, massive celestial objects can curve the very fabric of the universe with their gravity — causing distant sources of light to bend, warp, and appear magnified as their rays pass through the region on their way to Earth. Today, this phenomenon — called gravitational lensing — has been confirmed through dozens of telescope observations, and is a crucial tool that observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) use to probe the light of the oldest, faintest galaxies in the universe. And in this newly released JWST image of a tumultuous young galaxy cluster, Einstein’s gravitational funhouse effect is on full display. In the foreground, two bright white points of light ringed with white halos signify the gravitational center of MACS J0553.4-3342, a gargantuan collection of bound galaxies located in the constellation Columba (the dove). These two white beacons are massive elliptical galaxies, each wreathed in their own sub-cluster of smaller galaxies, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA)...

A little something awe (or aww) inspiring to start your midweek morning right.

This image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) offers a rare look at the hidden workings of Centaurus A, one of the most unusual and active galaxies relatively near Earth. JWST detected wavelengths of light humans cannot see, revealing a galaxy shaped by violence and chaos. Centaurus A is relatively close to the Milky Way, which enabled JWST to study the strange galaxy in remarkable detail. It's no quiet, ordinary galaxy; it's the aftermath of a major cosmic collision. At its heart is an actively feeding supermassive black hole, surrounded by vast clouds of dust that trace the galaxy's turbulent history. In visible light — such as images from the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory and Very Large Telescope in Chile — thick dust lanes obscure Centaurus A's center, blocking part of the story. The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, both of which can see in near-infrared wavelengths, previously imaged Centaurus A, but they also saw mainly dust. But infrared light can pass through that dust, which enabled JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument to see the galaxy's center glowing in white and pale pink, revealing filaments, loops and clouds of warm dust stretching across the scene. Scientists believe Centaurus A...

Webb uncovers unusual galaxy shaped by cosmic collision: Webb's unprecedented sensitivity across near- and mid-infrared wavelengths cuts through the thick lanes of dust that obscure Centaurus A’s cent...

Imagine the end of a Sun-like star. Billions of years from now, our own Sun will swell into a red giant, ballooning to more than a hundred times its current size. Mercury, Venus, and perhaps Earth will be swallowed whole. The star will then lose its outer layers, ending up as a compressed, blushing ember: the white dwarf. And any planet orbiting too close to its star should be vaporized in this cosmic bill of play. However, astronomers have discovered a huge planet hanging on for dear life in just such an impossible spot. The planet, WD 1856 b, is about the size of Jupiter. It circles its white dwarf star every 34 hours, at a distance of less than 2 million miles. For comparison, Earth orbits the Sun at a distance 50 times farther. If WD 1856 b had always been this close, it would have been destroyed during the red giant phase. Its survival is a puzzle, and one that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has now helped unravel. The exoplanet WD 1856 b was originally discovered in the year of last by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and the retired Spitzer Space Telescope. The...

Astronomers have reconstructed the "skeleton" of the cosmos in unprecedented detail, thanks to the largest-ever survey conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The resulting map reveals how galaxies have evolved since the universe's infancy around 13 billion years ago and how they fall together in a vast structure called the cosmic web. The cosmic web is the largest known structure in existence, home to countless galaxy clusters and clusters of clusters. It is the framework of the universe, a scaffolding of gas filaments, stars, voids and sheets of dark matter that trace the entire large-scale organization of the cosmos. In a paper published May 6 in The Astrophysical Journal, an international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), utilized a treasure trove of JWST data to reveal how the universe has evolved. How to sculpt a universe from scratch The new research shows how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the formation and death of stars — and, therefore, galaxies and galactic clusters — throughout vast swathes of cosmic time. Yet in what may seem like a wistful twist, the peak era of star formation is many billions of years behind us. The...

This week's science news was all about goings on in space, with reports that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) picked up a signal from a mysterious, never-before-seen substance on Pluto and Titan. The space telescope detected a specific absorption line in the spectra of these worlds' atmospheres, revealing the characteristic trace of a unique and unknown molecule. It's unclear exactly what the molecule could be, and the mystery is made even more compelling by the fact that the environments of Pluto and Titan are very distinct. Farther afield, the JWST's predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, spotted "impossible" light from a galaxy we shouldn't even be able to see. And in the busy skies surrounding our own planet, scientists are dreaming up a scheme to drop a giant "airbag" that could protect us from solar storms, sending spacecraft into orbit to save doomed telescopes, and also giving answers to why metal sticks together in space. And just in time for Independence Day weekend, the sun has launched a string of eruptions to Earth that will likely paint the night skies with colorful auroras. China's 'Great Green Wall' grows faster than natural forests 66 billion trees have been planted in China's...