How the James Webb Space Telescope changed astronomy in its first year

As Christmas approached last year, astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world flocked to watch the highly anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Although a great work of engineering, the telescope was not without controversy. homophobia.

Despite the debate over the telescope’s naming and history, one thing has become clear this year. The scientific capacity of JWST is amazing. With its July 2022 scientific launch, astronomers have already unlocked new insights and solved mysteries on a vast range of cosmic topics.

The JWST’s most pressing aim, one of the most ambitious projects in astronomy’s recent history, is to look back at some of the first galaxies that formed when the universe was brand new.

Because light takes time from its source to reach us on Earth, looking at very distant galaxies allows astronomers to effectively see the earliest galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago. You can go back in time to

Even though there was some discussion There was disagreement among astronomers about the accuracy of the first detections of some of the early galaxies — JWST’s instruments were not perfectly calibrated, so there is some uncertainty as to exactly how old the most distant galaxies were. There was room for — recent findings support the idea that the JWST discovered a galaxy the first 350 million years after the Big Bang.

This makes these galaxies the earliest ever observed, and some surprises await, including being much brighter than expected. That means we still have a lot to learn about how galaxies formed in the early Universe.

These early galaxies are survey and depth image, using Webb to examine large seemingly empty patches. These regions lack bright objects like the planets of our solar system and are far from the center of the galaxy, allowing astronomers to look deep into space to spot these very distant objects.

JWST was able to detect carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. Recently, we also discovered many other compounds, including water vapor and sulfur dioxide, in the atmosphere of planet WASP-39b. This not only means that scientists can see the composition of the planet’s atmosphere, but also how the atmosphere interacts with the light from the planet’s host star, as chemical reactions with light produce sulfur dioxide. You can also see if it works.

If we want to find Earth-like planets and look for life, learning about exoplanet atmospheres is very important. Previous generation tools can identify exoplanets and determine basic information such as mass, diameter and orbital distance from the star. But to understand what it’s like to be on one of these planets, we need to know about its atmosphere. With JWST data, astronomers can search for habitable planets far beyond our solar system.

Distant planets aren’t the only thing that’s getting JWST’s attention. Closer to home, JWST has been used to study the planets of our solar system. Neptune and Jupiter, and will soon be used to study Uranus as well. By looking in the infrared range, JWST was able to clearly capture features such as Jupiter’s auroras and the Great Red Spot. And because of the precision of the telescope, it was able to see small celestial objects even against the planet’s brightness, such as showing the rarely seen rings of Jupiter. Sharp images of Neptune’s rings were also captured over a period of more than 30 years.

Another major JWST survey this year was on Mars. Mars is the best-studied planet outside Earth and has hosted numerous rovers, orbiters and landers over the years. This means that astronomers have a fairly good understanding of its atmospheric composition and are beginning to learn about its weather system. Mars is so bright and so close that it is also especially difficult for sensitive space-based telescopes like JWST to study. But those factors made it the perfect proving ground to see what the new telescope could do.

Use JWST Both camera and spectrograph It studies Mars and shows atmospheric composition in near perfect agreement with models expected from current data, demonstrating how accurate the JWST instruments are for this type of investigation.

Another goal of JWST is to learn about the life cycle of stars, which astronomers currently loosely understand. They know, for example, that clouds of dust and gas form knots that gather more matter and collapse to form protostars, but exactly how that happens need more research. They are also learning about the regions where stars form and why stars tend to form in groups.

JWST is especially useful for researching this topic. Its infrared instrument allows us to see the interior of regions where stars are forming through dust clouds. Recent images are Development of protostars And the clouds they emit see regions of intense star formation, like the famous star pillar of creation in the Eagle Nebula. By imaging these structures, different wavelengthsthe JWST instrument can see various features of dust and star formation.

Speaking of the pillars of creation, one of JWST’s greatest legacies that sticks in the public’s mind is the stunning imagery of the universe it captures. Out of international excitement when the telescope’s first images were released in July, New views of iconic sights Like Pillars, Webb’s images were all over the place this year.

Not just luxurious carina nebula When first deep fieldand other images worth wondering for a moment include: tarantula nebuladusty “tree rings” Binary Wolf-Rayet 140and otherworldly brilliance Jupiter in infrared.

Images keep coming: just last week a new image was released, bright shining heart of the galaxy NGC 7469.

It’s been an incredible year of discovery.