Webb will spend about 33 hours this summer observing Jupiter, its rings, and two of its most interesting moons: icy Ganymede and volcanic hellscape Io. Along the way, the team will explore the limits of Webb’s abilities and find the best ways to use the telescope to study our own Solar System, which comes with a unique set of challenges for a telescope built to look 13 billion years into the past. Our Solar System’s largest planet and its complex menagerie of moons and rings present some fascinating scientific targets for Webb. Some of the first heavy-hitting science from the James Webb Space Telescope will come from our cosmic backyard.Īs part of the Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science Program - an initial round of studies carefully chosen to help scientists test Webb’s capabilities - University of California, Berkeley planetary scientist Imke de Pater and her team will use Webb to study Jupiter. Hubble/NASA THE WEBB TELESCOPE WILL REVEAL JUPITER AND ITS ICY MOONS IN STUNNING DETAIL So Beichman and his colleagues plan to look for something other searches may have missed: an exoplanet small enough to evade detection by radial velocity measurements, but just barely large enough to (hopefully) show up on Webb’s instruments. Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Charles Beichman and his team are about to take a chance on a long-shot search for an exoplanet orbiting one of our closest stellar neighbors. And those measurements say there can’t be a very large exoplanet - anything mass of Saturn or larger - within about three astronomical units (an astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between Earth and the Sun). On December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched from the ESA’s (European Space Agency) spaceport in French Guiana. What’s next for Webb? Does Alpha Centauri have habitable zone planets? Webb could settle the debateĪlpha Centauri A is just 4.4 light-years away, and astronomers have studied it thoroughly over the years - but if there’s a planet orbiting the nearby star, no telescope on Earth or in space has found a trace of it yet.Īstronomers have previously measured how much Alpha Centauri A wobbles, which could reveal the gravitational tug of a planet orbiting the star. 321 and lift off But, how much did launching the James Webb Telescope cost You’ll know that NASA launched a new telescope into space unless you’ve been living under a rock. Stay up-to-date on the latest science discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope with Inverse! you can follow along on our social media channels and on the site. As the pair continues to orbit one another, they “stir the pot” of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns. In the meantime, the brighter star influences the nebula’s appearance. ![]() ![]() The brighter star is in an earlier stage of its stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future. The stars – and their layers of light – are prominent in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the left, while the image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the right shows for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust. Webb’s infrared images feature new details in this complex system. Here’s what N ASA has to say about the Webb images: Two stars, which are locked in a tight orbit, shape the local landscape. Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA/ESA) The side-by-side comparison with Webb is incredible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |