Latest news with #STScI
CBS News
10-07-2025
- Science
- CBS News
NASA's Webb telescope captures images of new stars forming in Cat's Paw Nebula
New images taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope show young stars forming within a "toe bean" on the Cat's Paw Nebula. The Cat's Paw Nebula is named after its resemblance to a feline footprint: The nebula appears to have three toes, colloquially called "toe beans," and a wider heel. The nebula is near the Scorpius constellation and is about 4,000 light-years from Earth, NASA said in a news release. The James Webb Telescope focused its Near-Infrared Camera on one of the "toe beans" to look through the gas and dust that make up the nebula. The telescope found an "active star-forming region." The young stars, shown in yellow, appear to be "carving away at nearby gas and dust," NASA said. A new image of the Cat's Paw Nebula, taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The stars are also emitting bright light, represented in blue in the Webb images. Glowing red spots in the Webb images show areas where star formation is underway, NASA said. Other stars look blue-white. These ones have no radiation between themselves and Webb's camera, NASA said. At the bottom of the "toe bean" are small, dense filaments of dust that may be dense enough to collapse in on themselves and begin the process of becoming stars. The dust itself is imaged in brown. The colorful scene is temporary, NASA said, but will shape the area's future. "As a consequence of these massive stars' lively behavior, the local star formation process will eventually come to a stop," NASA said. The images were released to celebrate the third anniversary of the telescope, which launched in July 2022. Since then, it has made a number of discoveries, including showing that the universe evolved faster than astronomers believed, NASA said. The telescope has also imaged a number of stars and planets, and identified asteroids that might come near Earth. "Three years into its mission, Webb continues to deliver on its design – revealing previously hidden aspects of the universe, from the star formation process to some of the earliest galaxies," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "... The questions Webb has raised are just as exciting as the answers it's giving us."
Newsweek
10-06-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Iron May Rain From Sand Clouds on Newly-Discovered Planet
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Dusty clouds made of sand—that may rain iron—blanket a giant planet orbiting a young, sun-like star just 310 light-years from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed. The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore Maryland. Around the star—dubbed "YSES-1"—the researchers also directly observed another giant exoplanet around which is a potentially multiple-moon-forming circumplanetary disk. "This work highlights the incredible abilities of JWST to characterize exoplanet atmospheres," said paper author and astronomer Evert Nasedkin of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in a statement. "With only a handful of exoplanets that can be directly imaged, the YSES-1 system offers unique insights into the atmospheric physics and formation processes of these distant giants." An artist's impression of the planets of the star system YSES-1. An artist's impression of the planets of the star system YSES-1. Ellis Bogat Using Webb's Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), the team were able to capture the two planets—which are both several times larger than Jupiter, and orbit out far from their host star—in a single exposure. This has provided what lead author and STScI physicist Kielan Hoch calls "the most detailed dataset of a multi-planet system to date." Nasedkin added: "Directly imaged exoplanets—planets outside our own solar system—are the only exoplanets that we can truly take photos of. "These exoplanets are typically still young enough that they are still hot from their formation—and it is this warmth, seen in the thermal infrared, that we as astronomers observe." By recording the light coming from the two exoplanets, the team were able to unpick the signals that reveal the chemical makeup of the gas giant's atmospheres. "When we looked at the smaller, farther-out companion—known as YSES-1c—we found the tell-tale signature of silicate clouds in the mid-infrared," said Nasedkin. "Essentially made of sand-like particles, this is the strongest silicate absorption feature observed in an exoplanet yet." The team's analysis also indicated that the clouds contain iron, which may fall from the clouds down into the planet as rain. "We believe this is linked to the relative youth of the planets: younger planets are slightly larger in radius, and this extended atmosphere may allow the cloud to absorb more of the light emitted by the planet." The circumplanetary disk is the inner planet, YSES-1b, meanwhile, presents something of a mystery. Only three other such disks have been identified to date, but they are all around objects that are significantly younger than YSES-1b—leading to questions as to how the newly discovered disk could be so long-lived. And that is far from the only puzzle that will need to be solved. "The YSES-1 system planets are also too widely separated to be explained through current formation theories, so the additional discoveries of distinct silicate clouds around YSES-1c and small hot dusty material around YSES-1b leads to more mysteries and complexities for determining how planets form and evolve," Hoch concluded. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about exoplanets? Let us know via science@ Reference Hoch, K. K. W., Rowland, M., Petrus, S., Nasedkin, E., Ingebretsen, C., Kammerer, J., Perrin, M., D'Orazi, V., Balmer, W. O., Barman, T., Bonnefoy, M., Chauvin, G., Chen, C., De Rosa, R. J., Girard, J., Gonzales, E., Kenworthy, M., Konopacky, Q. M., Macintosh, B., Moran, S. E., Morley, C. V., Palma-Bifani, P., Pueyo, L., Ren, B., Rickman, E., Ruffio, J.-B., Theissen, C. A., Ward-Duong, K., & Zhang, Y. (2025). Silicate clouds and a circumplanetary disk in the YSES-1 exoplanet system. Nature.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
There's a 50/50 Chance the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy Will Merge
The universe might not meet its end for another quinvigintillion years, but our galaxy's fate teeters on a far less certain line. New research shows that there's a 50% chance that the Milky Way and its nearest major galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, will converge within the next 10 billion years. Previous analyses have made out the convergence to be a sure-fire thing, but it turns out that one dwarf galaxy is recalibrating the scales. Though about 2.5 million light-years currently lie between the Milky Way and Andromeda, the two galaxies are creeping closer to each other. In 1913, astronomer Vesto Melvin Slipher noticed via Arizona's Lowell Observatory that Andromeda (then known as the Andromeda Nebula) was approaching the Milky Way at 186 miles per second. Since then, researchers have not only verified Slipher's math but also found via multiple simulations that Andromeda will someday combine with the Milky Way. One paper from 2021 even proposes that the two galaxies will meet 4.3 billion years from now, with a complete merger taking another 6 billion years after that. But these simulations failed to account for one small yet mighty factor: the Large Magellanic Cloud. Roughly 160,000 light-years from our Milky Way, this dwarf galaxy has long been considered an insignificant part of the so-called Local Group. But in 2015, the beginning of the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History, or SMASH, found that the Large Magellanic Cloud was larger and more complex than initially thought. Astronomers have spent the years since sifting through SMASH data for dwarf galaxy secrets. Illustration of a hypothetical merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, DSS, Till Sawala (University of Helsinki); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) It's for this reason that the latest Milky Way-Andromeda merger simulation actually includes the Large Magellanic Cloud. To cover for every possible uncertainty, an international team of astronomers ran their simulation nearly 100,000 times and found that just under 50% of the time, the Milky Way and Andromeda collided and merged. Alternately dropping different nearby galaxies showed that Messier 33 (the third largest galaxy in the Local Group) made a merger more likely, while the Large Magellanic Cloud reduced the odds of a convergence. That's because the Large Magellanic Cloud pulls the Milky Way out of Andromeda's path, as a comic book hero would pull a civilian off some train tracks. The Large Magellanic Cloud might only get to bask in its glory for a few hundred million years, however. The researchers' simulation showed that the Milky Way will almost certainly collide with the Large Magellanic Cloud in 2 billion years, disappearing the latter galaxy. As observatories gather more data about the universe—and scientists' models inevitably become more advanced—we'll find out whether the Large Magellanic Cloud really will swoop in to save the day. Of course, we won't see the benefit either way. But it will be nice to know whether our galactic home will continue to exist after we're gone.
National Geographic
02-06-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
There's now a 50-50 chance this galaxy will crash into ours
Researchers have long thought that the Milky Way would collide with the Andromeda galaxy in four to five billion. In this scientific illustration of the Earth's horizon four billion years in the future. After its first close pass, Andromeda is tidally stretched out following its first close pass by the Milky Way, which is also warped. Illustration by NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger For more than a century, astronomers have watched the Andromeda galaxy, a massive swirl of neighboring stars, speed toward the Milky Way. And in recent years, measurements using the Hubble Space Telescope seemed to confirm a long-held prophecy: In about four or five billion years' time, the two galaxies will clash, ultimately merging into a colossal and unrecognizable new galaxy. A fresh survey of both galaxies and—crucially—several of the other weighty galaxies in the same corner of the cosmos has now cast doubt on that calamitous outcome. The new forecast looked billions of years into the future and found that the odds of an Andromeda and Milky Way merger is about fifty-fifty. 'A coin flip is the more accurate description,' says Till Sawala, an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki and a co-author of the new study. A messy galactic apocalypse is no longer a guarantee. As noted in the team's new study, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, 'proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated.' Earth won't be around in five billion years' time; it'll likely be scorched and swallowed up by our expanding, dying Sun. But if the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies successfully swerve around one another, that's good news for future worlds. A merger on this scale often sees the supermassive black holes at their hearts of each galaxy unify and expand into a fearsome, hyper-energetic astrophysical monster. That prevents nearby gas cooling down and gathering up to form new stars—and without new stars, you won't get new planets. The possibility of a galactic near-miss is 'somehow comforting,' says Alister Graham, a galaxy researcher at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and who wasn't involved with the new research. It's nice to think the Milky Way 'still has a long, planet-forming future ahead of it.' This animation depicts the collision between our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, which will merge into a single galaxy. The video also shows the Triangulum galaxy, which will join in the collision and perhaps later merge with the "Milkomeda" galaxy. NASA, ESA, and F. Summers (STScI) Galaxy merger mayhem Astronomers witness galaxy mergers happening throughout all of space and time. Two similarly massive galaxies uniting is referred to as a major merger, whereas if a larger galaxy ingests a smaller one, it's known as a minor merger. Although some stars get torn apart by the extreme gravitational interactions of the two galaxies churning about—and some, including their planets, will be scattered like confetti in all directions—but the spaces between individual stars are so vast that most of them don't collide. And although the smaller galaxies can vanish into the maws of the larger ones, the result is often constructive. 'Minor mergers deliver both stars and gas—the raw material for future star formation—into the host galaxy. The stellar winds from newly formed stars enrich the interstellar medium with dust and metals, further fueling the star formation cycle,' says Graham. Even the Milky Way shows evidence of having been assembled via multiple galactic smash-ups. 'Up to 50 percent of the mass in galaxies today come from previous galaxies cannibalized,' says Christopher Conselice, an extragalactic astronomer at the University of Manchester in England and who wasn't involved with the new research. Andromeda is visible to the naked eye from Earth. Here it can be seen as a bright spot in the night sky rises above Tufa formations in Mono Lake, California. Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, Nat Geo Image Collection At 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda, also known as M31, is our closest large galactic neighbor. Photograph by ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/GBT/WSRT/IRAM/C. Clark (STScI) Though astronomers have known that Andromeda is careening toward the Milky Way since the turn of the 20th Century, they weren't sure how direct, or glancing, the clash would be. But in 2012, a landmark study using Hubble came to a definitive conclusion: Based on the motions of their stars, and the galaxies' hefty masses, both would be gravitationally drawn into one another for a head-on collision in four to five billion years. (Later studies have come up with slightly earlier or later timelines for when the merger would happen, but never cast doubt on its inevitability.) And about two billion years after the tempestuous major merger, the two ink-like star spirals would settle down and coalescence. 'It would be an elliptical blob,' says Sawala. Both galaxies can be visible in the night sky: The Milky Way, which stretches across the night sky from the constellations Cassiopeia to Cygnus, and the Andromeda Galaxy appears above this 3000-year old bristlecone pine tree. Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, Nat Geo Image Collection Since 2012, this outcome became gospel among the scientific community, and a textbook fact. 'Should the Milky Way and Andromeda be all that matter—sorry about the pun—then they would be heading straight at each other,' says Graham. But the possibility of a future smash-up depends on the behavior of everything else in our Local Group, too: the panoply of at least 100 galaxies hanging about in this part of the universe. Other big galaxies in our neck of the woods might push or pull on the two voyagers over time. Sawala's team decided to simulate the evolution of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies ten billion years into the future. But while doing so, they also accounted for other major players in the Local Group: specifically, the spiral-shaped (and third-largest) Triangulum galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud (or LMC), an irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. The team used data from both Hubble and the European Space Agency's stargazing Gaia space observatory to more precisely determine the motions of these galaxies, as well as their masses—comprised of both ordinary matter and the invisible, but more prevalent, dark matter. Although the Triangulum Galaxy was already known to be quite massive, the LMC was thought to be a bit of a lightweight. But the new data suggest that it's surprisingly massive—equivalent to 10 to 20 percent of the mass of the Milky Way. 'And that will have an effect on how the Milky Way moves through space,' says Sawala. The team simulated the motions of these four heavyweight galaxies thousands of times. While the Triangulum galaxy's gravitational influence conspired to bring the Milky Way and Andromeda together, the LMC had a repellent effect. And when all four danced together, the odds of an eventual major merger was just one-in-two. This scientific illustration of the Earth's horizon 3.75 billion years in the future shows Andromeda filling the field of view and the Milky Way beginning to show distortion due to tidal pull from Andromeda. Illustration by NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), T. Hallas, and A. Mellinger A scientific illustration of the Earth's horizon 3.85 to 3.9 billion years in the future shows the first close approach of Andromeda. The sky is ablaze with new star formation, which is evident in a plethora of emission nebulae and open young star clusters. Illustration by NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), T. Hallas, and A. Mellinger 'There are going to be uncertainties in how and when the Milky Way and Andromeda would merge,' says Conselice. Dark matter may act as a binding force. But dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to push everything the universe apart, will also play a role—and recent data suggests it's strength can change over time. That makes forecasting a far-flung galactic merger somewhat tricky. But it's safe to say that it's no longer a certainty that these two galaxies will collide. Some astronomers have suggested that if they do, the new galaxy could be named Milkomeda. That moniker doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Don't worry, Sawala says: 'We will have billions of years to think of a better name.' Either way, galactic pandemonium will shape the Milky Way's future. Even though the LMC is pushing Andromeda and our own galaxy apart, the team's simulations also show with that, within the next two billion years, the LMC will spiral into us and be gobbled up by a merciless Milky Way. 'It's basically 100 percent that this will happen,' says Sawala. 'There's no escaping that.'
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Amazing Time Lapse Of Fading Supernova Spied By Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope captured imagery of supernova 2018 GV from 2018-2019. It was seen in barred spiral galaxy NGC 2525, which is located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. Credit: / footage courtesy: NASA, ESA, J. DePasquale (STScI), M. Kornmesser and M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble), A. Riess (STScI/JHU) and the SH0ES team, and the Digitized Sky Survey / produced & edited by Steve Spaleta
