The Orion Nebula may be a familiar and well-studied celestial object, but new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show this star-forming cloud of gas and dust in an incredibly new and vibrant light. The Orion Nebula, also known as “Messier 42” (M42), is located around 1,500 light years from Earth toward the […]
Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to detect the most distant pair of colliding black holes in the known universe. The cosmic monsters — each estimated to be as massive as 50 million suns — have been detected more than 13 billion light-years away, at a time just 740 million years after […]
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have found the most distant merger between supermassive black holes ever detected. The colliding black holes are at the heart of merging galaxies that are so distant that the collision is seen as it was happening just 740 million years after the Big Bang when the 13.8 […]
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Webb Space Telescope has discovered the earliest known merger of black holes. These two gigantic black holes and their galaxies consolidated just 740 million years after the universe-forming Big Bang. It’s the most distant detection ever made of merging black holes, scientists reported Thursday. One black hole is 50 […]
Can a “Hell Planet” have an atmosphere? In a new paper published May 8 in the journal Nature, researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have finally cracked this decades-old exoplanetary mystery — and, in doing so, detected the best evidence of an atmosphere around a rocky world outside our solar system. 55 […]
When I sat down with Jane Rigby last month, in an upper-floor conference room at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis — a quiet reprieve from the throngs of families perusing cosmic exhibits and dinosaur bones below — her eyes were warm and measured. She was also wearing a menagerie of gravitationally lensed galaxies. Her T-shirt was […]
MUNCIE, Ind. — Republicans went to the polls Tuesday and will have made one significant change to the Delaware County Council. Unofficial results show Brad Bookout was nominated to an at-large seat on council, carrying 19.91% of votes in the GOP race or 4,727 votes. Jessica Piper, president of the council, received 19.96%t of the […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed light from stars surrounding some of the earlier supermassive black holes in the universe — black holes seen as they were less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The observations conducted by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) addresses the question of […]
Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have mapped the weather on a planet 280 light-years from Earth — a hot gas giant with one side permanently facing its sun and the other cloaked in eternal night. The Janus-faced planet, named WASP-43b, is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium and is significantly hotter than […]
Cloudy With a Chance of Molten Iron The scientific instruments on board NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are so sensitive that they can tell the weather on an exoplanet a whopping 280 light years away. Using the telescope‘s mid-infrared light spectrometer, a team of international scientists managed to map the weather on the surface of WASP-43 […]
Recent reports of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detecting signs of life of a distant planet outside the solar system are, unfortunately, somewhat premature. That’s the conclusion of research conducted by scientists from the University of California Riverside (UCR). While likely to disappoint all of us eager for the confirmation of extraterrestrial life, however, […]
The glorious, billowing Southern Ring Nebula is the cocoon of a dying star — and it has a secret. Scientists have found this nebula to exhibit a double-ring structure that evidences not one, but possibly three stars at its heart. The Southern Ring Nebula, also designated NGC 3132, is a planetary nebula located about 2,000 […]