A light curve from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) shows the change in brightness from the WASP-39 star system over time as the planet transited the star. This observation was made using NIRSpec’s bright object time-series mode, which uses a grating to spread out light from a single bright object (like the host star of WASP-39 b) and measure the brightness of each wavelength of light at set intervals of time.
The background illustration of WASP-39 b and its star is based on current understanding of the planet from Webb spectroscopy and previous ground- and space-based observations. Webb has not captured a direct image of the planet or its atmosphere.
The artist’s concept displays the terminator of the exoplanet, the boundary that separates the planet’s dayside and nightside. The new analysis of a transmission spectrum of WASP-39 b from Webb’s NIRSpec builds two different spectra from the terminator region, essentially splitting the day/night boundary into two semicircles, one from the evening, and the other from the morning. Astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the morning and evening, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the morning being likely cloudier than the evening.
Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-investigates-et...
Credits:
Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Image Description: At the top of the infographic is a diagram showing a planet transiting (moving in front of) its star. Below the diagram is a graph showing the change in relative brightness of the star-planet system over 7 hours. The diagram and graph are aligned vertically to show the relationship between the geometry of the star-planet system as the planet orbits, and the measurements on the graph. The infographic shows that the brightness of the system remains steady until the planet begins to transit the star. It then decreases until the planet is directly in front of the star. The brightness increases again until the planet is no longer blocking the star, at which point it levels out.
Tags: jwst webb james space telescope exoplanets
Twin win: Webb discovered that WL 20S, long thought to be a star, is actually a pair of stars!
This image of the WL 20 star group combines data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Mid-Infrared Instrument on NASA’s Webb telescope. Gas jets emanating from the poles of twin stars appear blue and green; disks of dust and gas surrounding the stars are pink.
Image Credit: U.S. NSF; NSF NRAO; ALMA; NASA/JPL-Caltech; B. Saxton
Read more: go.nasa.gov/3VPCitD
Image Description: On a black background are bluish-green, rod-like structures to the right side of the image, representing gas jets emanating from a pair of stars. The structures have a watercolor-like texture. These are labeled as “Jets” using small white text in a purple box, with lines extending from the label pointing toward one larger, more green-ish structure and a smaller, more blue-ish structure to its left. Two pink, glowing bands horizontally cross both structures, labeled as “Disks.” These are disks of dust and gas surrounding the stars.
Tags: jwst webb james webb space telescope twin stars
Break out the chocolate and graham crackers, we’re headed to a “marshmallow” planet!
With its super puffy atmosphere, WASP-107 b is one of the least dense planets known. Based on its characteristics, this planet was thought to have a small, rocky core surrounded by a huge mass of hydrogen and helium. But how could its small core sweep up so much gas and not turn it to a Jupiter-mass planet? Or if its core was larger, why didn't its atmosphere contract to make the planet smaller?
New Webb data may have solved the mystery. For s‘more on this story: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-cracks-case-of-inflat...
Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
[Image Description: Graphic titled “Webb Solves a Marshmallow Planet Mystery,” featuring an illustration of an exoplanet with a hazy blue atmosphere and loose bands of clouds on the black background of space. The right three-quarters of the planet is lit by a star not shown in the illustration. The left quarter is in shadow. The terminator, the boundary between the day and night sides is gradual, not sharp. The planet is light blue with loose bands of white clouds. The edge of the planet has a subtle blue glow. Small white text in the top left corner reads “artist concept.”]
Tags: jwst webb james webb space telescope exoplanet WASP-17 b
I always feel like somebody’s watching me 👀
Happy Halloween from @NASAWebb and @NASAHubble! This terrifying new image combines data from both telescopes, unveiling a scary pair of “eyes” in space.
These eyes are actually the cores of two galaxies. The smaller spiral galaxy on the left is IC 2163. It has been slowly “creeping” behind the larger galaxy, NGC 2207.
It’s possible this pair will swing by one another repeatedly over the course of many millions of years. Their cores and arms might eventually meld, leaving behind completely reshaped arms, and an even brighter cyclops-like “eye” at the core.
These galaxies are busy places! In just one Earth year,they can form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of our Sun. That’s a lot compared to our Milky Way, which only forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year.
This image’s macabre colors are produced by combining mid-infrared light from Webb with ultraviolet and visible light from Hubble!
Read more: go.nasa.gov/3Uy0f7t
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, galaxies take the shape of a colorful beaded mask that sits above the nose. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller, taking up a little over a quarter of the view. The galaxy at right, NGC 2207, takes up half the view, with its spiral arms reaching the edges. IC 2163 has a bright orange core, with two prominent spiral arms that rotate counter clockwise and become straighter towards the ends, the left side extending almost to the edge. Its arms are a mix of pink, white, and blue, with an area that takes the shape of an eyelid appearing whitest. NGC 2207 has a very bright core. Overall, it appears to have larger, thicker spiral arms that spin counter clockwise. This galaxy also contains more and larger blue areas of star formation that poke out like holes from the pink spiral arms. In the middle, the galaxies’ arms appear to overlap. The edges show the black background of space, including extremely distant galaxies that look like orange and red smudges, and a few foreground stars.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Tags: jwst webb hubble galaxy merger james space telescope IC 2163 and NGC 2207
Today is Webb’s 1000th day in space! 🎉
Our #UnfoldTheUniverse "Lifer" checklist:
-A spacecraft impacting a moving asteroid
-Dust in unexpected places, from supernova remnants to early galaxies
-Atmospheres of exoplanets: small and rocky to large and gaseous; cold and hot; and sometimes no atmosphere at all
-Early black holes
-The farthest galaxy (so far!)
What's your favorite discovery?
[Also, within those 1000 days, we launched Webb, commissioned it, and saw it safely to its home at the second Lagrange point! 🚀]
Image Description:
An artist's depiction of Webb floats above Webb imagery that spells out the number 1000 against a black backdrop of galaxies and stars in blue and orange. The number one is a stretched out, orange, lensed galaxy. The first zero is the Southern Ring Nebula, with a roughly circular cavity filled with aqua-colored gas surrounded by a ring of red gas, with a star at the center. The second zero is a mid-infrared image of merging galaxy pair Arp 107, like a ghostly blue wagon-wheel with a bright center. The final zero is Jupiter, striped in grayish blue and beige with green and orange glows at the poles due to auroras.
Image credits:
Dwarf galaxy Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Kristen McQuinn (Rutgers University)
Gravitationally lensed galaxy from MACS J0138: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Justin Pierel (STScI) and Andrew Newman (Carnegie Institution for Science).
Southern Ring Planetary Nebula: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Arp 107, merging galaxies in mid-infrared: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Jupiter: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)
Tags: jwst webb james space telescope