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Just when we think we've seen it all, the universe reveals its secrets. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to redefine our understanding of space, this time by capturing a star in the throes of birth. The Webb's unparalleled ability to peer through dense gas and dust unveils phenomena that were once cloaked in mystery. Wherever the JWST looks, it finds matter and energy in a celestial ballet. Its latest performance? A star's formation, detailed more vividly than ever before. This isn't just another space photo; it's a glimpse into the origins of the cosmos. This discovery underscores the importance of innovation and exploration in the field of space science. As we push the boundaries of technology, we're not just learning about the universe; we're witnessing the very processes that shape it. For those of us in STEM, especially in the sectors of space and technology, this is a clarion call. The advancements of tools like the JWST don't just expand our knowledge—they open new avenues for research, development, and even industry. Imagine the possibilities that lie in understanding the universe's most fundamental processes. From energy to materials science, the applications are as boundless as space itself. Let's not just watch as the universe unveils its secrets. Let's be at the forefront, driving the innovation that explores these mysteries. Read more about this fascinating discovery: [https://lnkd.in/erDJkNQ8) The universe is talking. It's time we listen more closely than ever.

NASA shared a 3d tour of Pillars of Creation, a famous astronomical structure created using data from both Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. It's sooo bueatiful:) Pillars of Creation - Located in the Eagle Nebula (M16), about 6,500 light-years away - Three large, dense columns of interstellar gas and dust, each about 10 light-years long - Formed by the collapse of a giant molecular cloud Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Observations - Observed the pillars in visible light in 1995 - Revealed the iconic structure, but was limited by dust and gas obscuration - Showed the pillars' surface features, including ridges and valleys James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Observations - Observed the pillars in infrared light in 2022 - Penetrated through dust and gas, revealing hidden stars and structures - Showed the pillars' internal structure, including cavities and filaments - Revealed the formation of new stars within the pillars 3D Tour - Combines HST and JWST data to create a virtual "flight" through the pillars - Allows a immersive exploration of the pillars' structure and evolution - Highlights the complementary capabilities of HST and JWST Key Features Revealed by JWST - Hidden stars: Forming within the pillars, revealed by JWST's infrared vision - Gas and dust: Swirling around the stars, illuminated by JWST - Cavities: Hollowed out by radiation and winds from nearby stars - Filaments: Thread-like structures connecting the pillars Technical Details - HST: Observed in visible light (0.4-0.8 μm) using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) - JWST: Observed in infrared light (1.0-2.5 μm) using the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) - Data processing: Combined HST and JWST data using advanced algorithms and visualization techniques This is showing the power of multi-wavelength astronomy and the complementary capabilities of Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. and it become my favourite view 🙂

Could We Turn the Sun Into an Extremely Powerful Telescope?: It's hypothetically capable of "delivering an exquisite portrait of the detailed surface features of any exoplanet within 100 light-years..." writes Space.com. "It would be better than any telescope we could possibly build in any possible future for the next few hundred years..." While the sun may not look like a traditional lens or mirror, it has a lot of mass. And in Einstein's theory of general relativity, massive objects bend space-time around them. Any light that grazes the surface of the sun gets deflected and, instead of continuing in a straight line, heads toward a focal point, together with all the other light that grazes the sun at the same time... The "solar gravitational lens" leads to an almost unbelievably high resolution. It's as if we had a telescope mirror the width of the entire sun. An instrument positioned at the correct focal point would be able to harness the gravitational warping of the sun's gravity to allow us to observe the distant universe with a jaw-dropping resolution of 10^-10 arcseconds. That's roughly a million times more powerful than the Event Horizon Telescope. Of course, there are challenges with using the solar gravitational lens as a natural telescope. The focal point of all this light bending sits 542 times greater than the distance between Earth and the sun. It's 11 times the distance to Pluto, and three times the distance achieved by humanity's most far-flung spacecraft, Voyager 1, which launched in 1977. So not only would we have to send a spacecraft farther than we ever have before, but it would have to have enough fuel to stay there and move around. The images created by the solar gravitational lens would be spread out over tens of kilometers of space, so the spacecraft would have to scan the entire field to build up a complete mosaic image. Plans to take advantage of the solar lens go back to the 1970s. Most recently, astronomers have proposed developing a fleet of small, lightweight cubesats that would deploy solar sails to accelerate them to 542 AU. Once there, they would slow down and coordinate their maneuvers, building up an image and sending the data back to Earth for processing... The telescope already exists — we just have to get a camera in the right position. Thanks to Tablizer (Slashdot reader #95,088) for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wow! The first portion of a sky map from the Euclid space telescope has been released. The newly released data is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels and covers 1% of what will be the final map. The goal of European Space Agency's Euclid Mission is to enable the creation of a 3D map in time and space of the universe, in an attempt to elucidate its evolution and, as a result, shed light on the mysterious phenomena of dark energy and dark matter that together make up 95% of the universe. The completed map is expected to involve six years of observations and will take in a third of the sky, with observations expected to capture billions of galaxies out to 10billion light years. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is funding four Canadian scientists' participation in the Euclid mission. Dr. Will Percival, Distinguished Research Chair in Astrophysics, University of Waterloo, is using advanced statistical techniques to analyse the 3D pattern of galaxies in the universe, finding a "standard ruler" that can be used to measure the expansion of the universe. Dr. Percival's team uses Euclid data to understand why the expansion is accelerating at present day. Dr. Mike Hudson, Professor of astronomy, University of Waterloo, is a researcher in observational and theoretical cosmology. He studies galaxy formation in order to better understand and measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy. He and his team use Euclid data to study this shape-bending effect around galaxies. Dr. Douglas Scott, Professor, astronomy and astrophysics, University of British Columbia, studies cosmology, which examines the universe at the largest scales. The main science goal of the Euclid mission is to learn about the dark universe by using the bright universe. Dr. Tyrone Woods, Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba, researches the physics of some of the most extreme objects and most energetic events in the universe. Dr. Woods' team use Euclid data to probe the formation and growth of supermassive black holes, trace the evolution of galaxies, and understand the connections between the two over the history of the universe. Connect to, and follow Space Place Planetarium Canada's LinkedIn page to learn more about space and astronomy, as well as Space Place Canada's progress bringing an iconic 21st century planetarium to Toronto, promoting STEAM (STEM + Arts) education for Canada and the World. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/gnrapJF #space #esa #csa #canadianspaceagency #euclid #astronomy #spacetelescopes #canadianastronomy #universityofwaterloo #universityofbritishcolumbia #cosmology #astrophysics #spaceplace #spaceplacecanada #mda #prattandwhitney #spacecanada #spacetelescopes #telescopes #canadianinnovation

#astronomy #JWST #SMBH A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope depicts the #quasar cataloged as RX J1131-1231, or simply RX J1131. About six billion light-years away from Earth, it's visible in three different copies, recognizable in the upper part of the bright ring in the center of the image, due to a gravitational lensing effect generated by a galaxy between it and Earth. In particular, MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) was used to observe RX J1131 with different mid-infrared filters as part of an observation program that studies dark matter. https://lnkd.in/dGmEVgCB

Since we're shut down due to the weather today, let's check in on the James Webb Space Telescope! Earlier this week, a new image was released that combined data from the James Webb and the Chandra X-ray Telescope, along with the Hubble and Spitzer! What you're seeing is a supernova remnant from a star that exploded around 11,000 years ago (and the light reached us about 340 years ago). When the core of a high-mass star collapses into a neutron star or black hole, a huge amount of energy is released all at once that blows the outer layers of the star into space. So what we're seeing is the ongoing explosion of energy and we're seeing it in visible light, infrared and X ray! Click on the link to read more! https://lnkd.in/eGXCtVuW #barlowplanetarium #astronomy #supernova #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #space #cassiopeia #uwofoxcities #ChandraXRayObservatory #spitzerspace #hubbletelescope

📃Scientific paper: Value Sliced and Derivative Images for Source Mask in JWST MIRI Photometry Abstract: One of many ways for the James-Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to capture astronomical signals is the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) Imaging mode. To make this data ready for analysis, the JWST standard reduction pipeline has three stages and many mandatory and optional steps to produce analysis-ready data. At the end of stage 3, there is a resampled 2-dimensional image for each band/wavelength, an estimated source catalog, and a source mask (segmentation image) locating these sources. This study focuses on enhancing this source mask part so that it can detect more point sources, previously cataloged after older missions, without spuriously "detecting" false positives. Combined use of the fraction of a resampled image and a derivative image seemed to improve the capability to detect unWISE catalog-located sources better than original segmentation images in 7 different real cases with the MIRI F770W filter. A few approaches are recommended to make better use of these value-sliced and derivative images. ;Comment: 12 pages Continued on ES/IODE ➡️ https://etcse.fr/xGbl5 ------- If you find this interesting, feel free to follow, comment and share. We need your help to enhance our visibility, so that our platform continues to serve you.

If you need a content creator, here's an example of content we produce: an #astronomy article about an image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope depicts the #quasar cataloged as RX J1131-1231, or simply RX J1131 in three different copies due to a gravitational lensing effect. #JWST #SMBH https://lnkd.in/dydXmPxP

OBSERVATIONS, INSTRUMENTS AND IINTERPRETATION OF IMAGES October 13, 2024 A set of epistemological issues of key interest in all sciences surrounds observations, the recording of evidence, instruments used for observing objects or events, and of course the interpretation of evidence thus obtained. In the example shown below, two observations are provided of the gravitational lensing phenomenon, involving two separate supernovae explosions that have occurred at the same galaxy, as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016 and by the James Webb Telescope in 2023. Two points of epistemological interest will be brought up here in this post. First, these images as obtained do not show exactly, but only in gross approximation, what happened. The two telescopes provide images of the events as they approximately occurred and as recorded in approximation from Earth-bound, human-made instruments. If another observer were to observe and record the same events from a different location, either from our Milky Way galaxy or some other galaxy, the events would be looking differently, potentially significantly so. Second, the instruments scientists make to observe objects and events are made so that what the scientist wishes to observe is observed. Again, this directly implies that expectations about objects and speculative holdings by scientists on events shape what we devise and choose to use to observe them. In both cases, this is not what “actually” occurs out there, independently of who is that observes it, and what instruments they use to observe what it is that they wish to observe and choose the means to record it. What an object or event “looks like” is a product of who observes it, and how they observe it. In that realization and epistemological dictum, all sorts of scientific (theoretical and ideological) biases are embedded. Source of the two images shown below, and appropriate credit for them is here, where a NASA description of the two images is given:

[Hubble Telescope Bounces Back With Glorious Galaxy Pic In '1-gyroscope Mode'] The Hubble Space Telescope is back in action, having returned to science operations but now with just one operating gyroscope. And to prove it's still got what it takes, the venerable observatory snapped a striking photo of the dusty spiral galaxy NGC 1546. Located about 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado, the Swordfish, NGC 1546 is a brilliant example of what's referred to as a "flocculent" spiral. Rather than the graceful sweep of curved arms that some spiral galaxies have, NGC 1546's appear more messy, with eruptions of star formation in the arms triggering more star formation nearby, leading to the patchy structure. The dust that we see backlit by NGC 1546's bright core is the product of countless generations of stars that have been born, lived and died, ejecting vast amounts of dust into space during their death throes. The dust, made from particles just microns (millionths of a meter) in size, shows that the galaxy has a healthy chemistry; that dust will be recycled into new generations of stars and provide the heavy elements for planets around those new stars. The bright blue regions, more visible on the far side of the galaxy where dust isn't blocking the view, are examples of these hot young stars in freshly born star clusters. Although the Hubble Space Telescope has taken many spectacular images such as this during its 34 years of operation in Earth orbit, this image of NGC 1546 taken with the telescope's Wide-field Camera 3 is one of Hubble's most important. That's because it puts to rest any doubts about Hubble's immediate future. Over the past year, the space telescope repeatedly entered safe mode as one of its last three functional gyroscopes began returning faulty data. Hubble was equipped with six new gyroscopes, which are used for slewing and pointing the telescope, during the last servicing mission in 2009. Fifteen years later, only two remain fully operational. While three working gyroscopes at any one time is preferred for efficiency reasons, Hubble can function on just one. Overall, NASA estimates that from hereon Hubble will see a drop of up to 25% in productivity. Hubble returned to active duty on June 14, with this image of NGC 1546 being its first since then — and the first of many more to come. Source: https://lnkd.in/dcnZgFbC #galaxyaerosgh #space #spaceexploration #SpaceNews