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Astronomers Find Ancient Brown Dwarf in Solar Neighborhood

WISE 1810055-1010023 (WISE 1810 for short), a metal-poor brown dwarf located 8.9 parsecs (29 light-years) away, is nearly 10 billion years old.

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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Roman Space Telescope

NASA has awarded a contract to SpaceX to provide launch services for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission.

The telescope is currently targeted to launch in October 2026, as specified in the contract, on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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James Webb official describes ‘solemn’ mood during ‘very serious’ early setback

NASA's James Webb team made history last week.
Only a short time ago though, NASA officials feared James Webb's mission was doomed and that we may never see the first scientific images revealed to the world just a few days ago.

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Behold! This beautiful new Webb Telescope image looks unreal
An astronomer transformed James Webb Space Telescope data into a gorgeous image.
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Scientists can now grow wood in a lab without cutting a single tree

A team of researchers at MIT claims that lab-grown timber can replace deforestation driving products made from real wood. They have developed a technique using which timber can be produced in any shape and size, so for example, if you need a new wooden chair, using the researcher’s technique, you can create it in a lab without cutting a single tree.   

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Where in the night sky exactly are the "cosmic cliffs" from the JWST Carina Nebula images? (4K)

In order to give some context to the amazing images from the James Webb Space Telescope, we wanted to show where exactly the image belongs in the night sky. The scale is truly immense.
Further explanation

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As part of Webb’s prep for science, we tested how the telescope tracks solar system objects like Jupiter. Webb worked better than expected, and even caught Jupiter’s moon Europa

These images are designed for engineering purposes, so they aren’t processed in the same way as our first images this week. Like some earlier calibration images, these are processed to emphasize certain features.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/14/webb-images-of-jupiter-and-more-now-available-in-commissioning-data
Source: @NASAWebb
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Webb's First Deep Field (NIRISS Emission Spectra)

At far left is a near-infrared image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. A group of massive galaxies below and to the right of the bright central star have distorted, magnified, and mirrored many galaxies in this field.

By quickly examining the image at left by eye, it becomes clearer that one arc may be made up of two similar-looking galaxies. Their bright central regions match, despite their stretched appearances. These may be lensed galaxies – one galaxy that is mirrored in a second location. Are they the same? Researchers can’t be sure from the image alone – more data are needed to confirm a match.

Scientists do this by gathering spectra, which spread light out so they can fully examine an object’s makeup. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), which gathers spectra of every object in any field it observes, was pointed at the galaxy cluster to gather more detail. A segment of the NIRISS grism image (an instrument that has a grating, or stair steps, on a prism), at center, shows how ionized oxygen and atomic hydrogen emission lines are distributed along the arc.

Next, the spectra from each of these two galaxies were plotted as graphs, shown at right, to reveal their compositions. The graphs, known as spectra, match, which indicates that these arcs are mirror images of the same galaxy. Webb’s spectra from NIRISS also quickly proved that light from both galaxies was emitted 9.3 billion years ago, further confirming they are one and the same.

Using Webb’s NIRISS is like opening a treasure chest overflowing with spectra. For example, this instrument can disperse the spectra along the image vertically and horizontally. Researchers can use both modes to untangle which lines match each source.

Every object’s image can be transformed into spectra like the two shown above. So even if researchers aren’t intending to study a particular galaxy in the field, they may make a surprise discovery.

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