Jewels of discovery by NASA's Webb Space Telescope in its first 3 years
According to Nasa, since July 2022, Webb has collected nearly 550 terabytes of data in just three years between its imaging and spectroscopy capabilities.
To mark the three-year anniversary of Webb's mission, NASA highlighted some of the discoveries and revelations made by the most powerful space telescope operating today.
Let's take a look at a few of Webb's achievements that wow'd astronomers and the public alike.
Webb was created to observe the "cosmic dawn," when the first stars and galaxies were forming. During this period, scientists theorized they would see a few faint galaxies, but Webb saw bright galaxies within 300 million years of the Big Bang.
"Hundreds of millions of years might not seem quick for a growth spurt, but keep in mind that the universe formed in the big bang roughly 13.8 billion years ago," NASA said. "If you were to cram all of cosmic time into one year, the most distant of these galaxies would have matured within the first couple of weeks, rapidly forming multiple generations of stars and enriching the universe with the elements we see today."
JWST was used to cross-check the physics problem known as "Hubble Tension," which refers to Hubble Space Telescope observations over 30 years that show the universe is expanding faster than expected. The mystery phenomenon of why the universe is expanding is known to cosmologists as "dark energy."
According to the team behind the 2024 study, observations from both Hubble and JWST aligned closely. With Webb's findings, cosmologists say it might be time to rethink the standard cosmological model and begin looking for something yet to be discovered that could improve our understanding of the universe.
Scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to take their first-ever direct look at how the water emissions from the Moon Enceladus supply the Saturnian system and its famed rings. Webb revealed the plume from Enceladus spans more than 6,000 miles, about 20 times wider than the Moon, spreading out into donut-shaped rings encircling Saturn.
Ocean On Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has All The Ingredients For Life, Study Finds
When a star like our Sun dies, the death creates ripple effects large enough to consume any nearby planets. In a final act, the outer layer of the star is shed, leaving behind a super-hot core known as a white dwarf.
Scientists used Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument to find potential surviving planets orbiting white dwarfs. If confirmed, it would mean under the right conditions, a planet could survive the death of its star.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope delivered incredibly detailed images of spiral galaxies in a combination of near- and mid-infrared light. According to NASA, these images reveal so much more than previous Hubble Space Telescope images, down to the filaments of dust wrapping around the spiral arms.
Click through the gallery below to see Webb's images of spiral galaxy NGC 628 compared to Hubble's.
"Webb's new images are extraordinary," said Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in January 2024. "They're mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle."
More recently, Webb's powerful instruments were used to size up a newly discovered asteroid potentially threatening Earth.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on Dec. 27, 2024, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. The asteroid warranted international attention, briefly jumping to the highest asteroid threat on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale.
Chances Asteroid 2024 Yr4 Will Hit Moon Increase But Earth Remains In The Clear
JWST was able to help scientists determine asteroid 2024 YR4 is about the size of a 15-story building, calculate its orbital path and declare Earth safe from a collision course with the asteroid. However, the Moon is still not out of the woods yet.
NASA estimates the Webb telescope has about 20 more years of observation time left, allowing for decades of discoveries to come.Original article source: Jewels of discovery by NASA's Webb Space Telescope in its first 3 years
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