The Sombrero Galaxy, M104, as seen by Spitzer, JWST, and Hubble.

Notice the outer ring, which appears smooth in the lower-resolution Spitzer image, shows glowing clumps of dust in the mid-infrared JWST image. These same dusty clumps appear dark in the visible light Hubble image.

The dust JWST sees is made of soot-like carbon-containing molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. They can indicate the presence of young star-forming regions.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-137

New results out of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Astronomers found a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star, the second closest star system to the Earth. The planet Barnard b orbits its star every 3.15 days and has a mass about 0.37 times that of Earth.

There are also hints of planets with 2.34, 4.12, and 6.74 day-orbits, although more observations are needed to confirm the existence of those planets.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2414/

Two years after a cyber attack, ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) re-lauched the ALMA mini-site for kids.

I'm glad it's back online. There is lots of great content and activities here, available in both English and Spanish, including my favorite electromagnetic spectrum chart.

https://kids.alma.cl/

#Astronomy #Astrodon #ITeachPhysics

Surprisingly, sometimes people are wrong on the internet. There are a lot of mislabeled astronomical images out there.

How can you find images of space from trusted sources? Try AstroPix. It offers access to the public image galleries from leading astronomical observatories under a single unified interface. Search by object name or coordinates, or use the free text to search titles, captions, and topics.

https://www.astropix.org

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Did you know that all #Hubble and #JWST images (and most things produced by @spacetelescope) are in the public domain?

That means you can do whatever you want with them (as long as it's legal), including charging admission to see your exhibit of T-shirts with JWST images printed on them, to help fund your Hubble-inspired tattoo.

Full FAQ at the bottom of the page here:
https://webbtelescope.org/copyright

Hubble is back doing science!

Here is one of the first new images #Hubble has taken since transitioning to one-gyro mode and restarting science operations June 14.

It features the lenticular galaxy NGC 1546, a member of the Dorado group of galaxies, about 58 million light years away.

https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-026

It's official, #Hubble has successfully transitioned to one-gyro mode and is back to doing science.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-restarts-science-in-new-pointing-mode/

@mcnees Here is a recent video about Nancy Grace Roman produced by STScI
https://youtu.be/3yK_EVdO1r4

Baby stars are messy eaters. This diagram from a review article illustrates the complex interplay between protostars, magnetic fields, and the surrounding gas on large and small scales.

Stars form in cold, dusty clouds of mostly hydrogen gas. As they grow, stars pull in more mass from disks, permeated with magnetic fields. The fields twist around the star, channeling some gas into the star and some into jets above and below the disk.
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📷 Frank et al. 2014
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014prpl.conf..451F/abstract

This interview with Benjamin Fernando about the follow up on claims by a certain Harvard astronomer of recovering an alien technology meteor is great.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/science/meteor-avi-loeb.html?unlocked_article_code=1.b00.0QFN.Ne8pbHks9G3p&smid=url-share

The final galaxy in the 19 days of #PHANGS series is NGC 7496, a face-on, dusty spiral, as seen by #Hubble and #JWST.

It was discovered on September 5, 1834 by John Herschel, son of astronomer William Herschel and nephew of astronomer Caroline Herschel.

The galaxy is about 60 million light years (19 Mpc) away.
📷 https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2024/105/01HMC2V0K4TCGD0B8B6BWTSRH8
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The next entry in the 19 days of #PHANGS galaxies series is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4535, as seen by #Hubble and #JWST.

NGC 4535 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, a massive cluster of about 1300 galaxies. It is about 51 million light-years (15.8 Mpc) away.

📷 https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2024/105/01HMC1WES0PGCMWMZMSPNFH2TG
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The #PHANGS collaboration released a video that fades between the recently #Hubble and #JWST images of all 19 PHANGS galaxies.

Video editing: Sophia Stuber (MPIA) and the PHANGS YouTube team

https://youtu.be/KwqqVAAW9EI

The cameras on space telescopes and robotic spacecraft that we have sent to explore the solar system are optimized for science, not for approximating what human eyes would see.

Ok, but what would the planets look like if you could actually fly there with a space ship?

An article form the Planetary Society tries to answer this question:
https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-the-true-colors-of-the-planets-arent-what-you-think

This is fun. Watch the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A expand and brighten over a period of 60 years.

This video was made from a series of photographic plates taken between 1951 and 1989 at the Palomar Observatory in California, plus ground-based images taken in 1996 and 1999 by the MDM Observatory, and Hubble observations from 2004 and 2011.

🎞️ https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2019/firstlight/

Earlier this week, we saw a new #JWST image of Cassiopeia A. Cas A has been observed with many other telescopes over the years. Let's take a multi-wavelenght tour of the supernova remnant across different types of light.

📷 https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/149/01HGH0SBY44A8SM23AGB1H06F7

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You've heard of a sound echo: Sound bounces off of a surface and reflects back, causing a delay.

Did you know that light echos are also a thing? If there is a flash of light from something like a supernova, that light can hit interstellar clouds of dust and then reflect back, giving you light from the original supernova but on a delay.

We can use this delayed light to learn about what kind of star blew up in the supernova.

🎞️ https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/video/ssc2008-09v2-dissecting-a-light-echo

#astronomy #space

Jupiter is actually quite difficult to observe with #JWST's large mirror. The planet is so bright that researchers had to use clever techniques to avoid saturating the telescope's detectors.

The result of those efforts is this NIRCam image of Jupiter. The white areas are very high-altitude cloud tops. The dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. Auroras, extending to high altitudes above the planet's north and south poles, are seen in red.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-147

Ever wonder how much of the celestial sphere #JWST can see at one time?

Since we don't want to fry our 10-billion-dollar telescope, JWST always has to face away from the Sun, keeping the Sun behind its sunshield. However, as the telescope orbits the Sun, its view changes. JWST can observe about 39% of the full sky on any given day and can access 100% of the sky over 6 months.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/videos/1157-Video

A new #JWST view of the remnant of Supernova 1987A. 

SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years, since its discovery in February of 1987. Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it was the nearest supernova to explode in the era of modern telescopes.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-136

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#Astronomy #Supernova