Kamala Harris, French President Get First Look at Galactic Get Together
A merging galaxy pair cavort in this image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, an international mission led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). This new Webb image of a pair of galaxies, known to astronomers as II ZW 96, was first previewed for Kamala Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to NASA Headquarters in Washington Wednesday, Nov. 30. Vice President Harris and President Macron also previewed a new composite image of the Pillars of Creation from Webb.
II ZW 96 is roughly 500 million light-years from Earth and lies in the constellation Delphinus, close to the celestial equator. As well as the wild swirl of the merging galaxies, a menagerie of background galaxies are dotted throughout the image.
The two galaxies are in the process of merging and as a result have a chaotic, disturbed shape. The bright cores of the two galaxies are connected by bright tendrils of star-forming regions, and the spiral arms of the lower galaxy have been twisted out of shape by the gravitational perturbation of the galaxy merger. It is these star-forming regions that made II ZW 96 such a tempting target for Webb; the galaxy pair is particularly bright at infrared wavelengths thanks to the presence of the star formation.
This observation is from a collection of Webb measurements delving into the details of galactic evolution, in particular in nearby Luminous Infrared Galaxies such as II ZW 96. These galaxies, as the name suggests, are particularly bright at infrared wavelengths, with luminosities more than 100 billion times that of the Sun. An international team of astronomers proposed a study of complex galactic ecosystems – including the merging galaxies in II ZW 96 – to put Webb through its paces soon after the telescope was commissioned. Their chosen targets have already been observed with ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, which will provide astronomers with insights into Webb’s ability to unravel the details of complex galactic environments.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/vp-harris-french-president-get-first-look-at-galactic-get-together
Ultra epic
Webb, Keck Telescopes Team Up to Track Clouds on Saturn’s Moon Titan
On the morning of Saturday, Nov. 5, an international team of planetary scientists woke up with great delight to the first Webb images of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Here, Principal Investigator Conor Nixon and others on the Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) program 1251 team using Webb to investigate Titan’s atmosphere and climate describe their initial reactions to seeing the data.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it is also the only planetary body other than Earth that currently has rivers, lakes, and seas. Unlike Earth, however, the liquid on Titan’s surface is composed of hydrocarbons including methane and ethane, not water. Its atmosphere is filled with thick haze that obscures visible light reflecting off the surface.
We had waited for years to use Webb’s infrared vision to study Titan’s atmosphere, including its fascinating weather patterns and gaseous composition, and also see through the haze to study albedo features (bright and dark patches) on the surface. Titan’s atmosphere is incredibly interesting, not only due to its methane clouds and storms, but also because of what it can tell us about Titan’s past and future – including whether it always had an atmosphere. We were absolutely delighted with the initial results.
Team member Sebastien Rodriguez from the Universite Paris Cité was the first to see the new images, and alerted the rest of us via email: “What a wake-up this morning (Paris time)! Lots of alerts in my mailbox! I went directly to my computer and started at once to download the data. At first glance, it is simply extraordinary! I think we’re seeing a cloud!” Webb Solar System GTO Project Lead Heidi Hammel, from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), had a similar reaction: “Fantastic! Love seeing the cloud and the obvious albedo markings. So looking forward to the spectra! Congrats, all!!! Thank you!”
Thus began a day of frantic activity. By comparing different images captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), we soon confirmed that a bright spot visible in Titan’s northern hemisphere was in fact a large cloud. Not long after, we noticed a second cloud. Detecting clouds is exciting because it validates long-held predictions from computer models about Titan’s climate, that clouds would form readily in the mid-northern hemisphere during its late summertime when the surface is warmed by the Sun.
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We then realized it was important to find out if the clouds were moving or changing shape, which might reveal information about the air flow in Titan’s atmosphere. So we quickly reached out to colleagues to request follow-up observations using the Keck Observatory in Hawai’i that evening. Our Webb Titan team lead Conor Nixon from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center wrote to Imke de Pater at University of California, Berkeley, and Katherine de Kleer at Caltech, who have extensive experience using Keck: “We just received our first images of Titan from Webb, taken last night. Very exciting! There appears to be a large cloud, we believe over the northern polar region near Kraken Mare. We were wondering about a quick response follow-up observation on Keck to see any evolution in the cloud?”
After negotiations with the Keck staff and observers who had already been scheduled to use the telescope that evening, Imke and Katherine quickly queued up a set of observations. The goal was to probe Titan from its stratosphere to surface, to try to catch the clouds we saw with Webb. The observations were a success! Imke de Pater commented: “We were concerned that the clouds would be gone when we looked at Titan two days later with Keck, but to our delight there were clouds at the same positions, looking like they had changed in shape.”
After we got the Keck data, we turned to atmospheric modeling experts to help interpret it. One of those experts, Juan Lora at Yale University, remarked: “Exciting indeed! I’m glad we’re seeing this, since we’ve been predicting a good bit of cloud activity for this season! We can’t be sure the clouds on November 4th and 6th are the same clouds, but they are a confirmation of seasonal weather patterns.”
The team also collected spectra with Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which is giving us access to many wavelengths that are blocked to ground-based telescopes like Keck by Earth’s atmosphere. This data, which we are still analyzing, will enable us to really probe the composition of Titan’s lower atmosphere and surface in ways that even the Cassini spacecraft could not, and to learn more about what is causing the bright feature seen over the south pole.
We are expecting further Titan data from NIRCam and NIRSpec as well as our first data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in May or June of 2023. The MIRI data will reveal an even greater part of Titan’s spectrum, including some wavelengths we have never seen before. This will give us information about the complex gases in Titan’s atmosphere, as well as crucial clues to deciphering why Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/12/01/webb-keck-telescopes-team-up-to-track-clouds-on-saturns-moon-titan/
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kek
Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image)
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
Myriad stars are spread throughout the scene. The stars primarily show up in near-infrared light, marking a contribution of Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Near-infrared light also reveals thousands of newly formed stars – look for bright orange spheres that lie just outside the dusty pillars.
In mid-infrared light, the dust is on full display. The contributions from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are most apparent in the layers of diffuse, orange dust that drape the top of the image, relaxing into a V. The densest regions of dust are cast in deep indigo hues, obscuring our view of the activities inside the dense pillars.
Dust also makes up the spire-like pillars that extend from the bottom left to the top right. This is one of the reasons why the region is overflowing with stars – dust is a major ingredient of star formation. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. Newly formed stars are especially apparent at the edges of the top two pillars – they are practically bursting onto the scene.
At the top edge of the second pillar, undulating detail in red hints at even more embedded stars. These are even younger, and are quite active as they form. The lava-like regions capture their periodic ejections. As stars form, they periodically send out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for millions of years.
Almost everything you see in this scene is local. The distant universe is largely blocked from our view both by the interstellar medium, which is made up of sparse gas and dust located between the stars, and a thick dust lane in our Milky Way galaxy. As a result, the stars take center stage in Webb’s view of the Pillars of Creation.
The Pillars of Creation is a small region within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/52534406448/in/album-72177720301006030/