Latest news with #SpaceTelescope
Time of India
5 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope uncovers mysterious ‘climate system' on Pluto regulated by strange blue haze
Source: Live Science NASA 's James Webb Space Telescope is again on its way to expand the understanding of the outer solar system. And this time, the explanation on its dwarf planet Pluto that keeps defying expectations. Nearly a decade earlier, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft shattered the notion of the upended assumptions about Pluto's lifelessness, where new data revealed by JWST confirms something extraordinary. One of the biggest surprises which floated above all is Pluto's blueish haze, which isn't just a visual marvel but actively regulates the planet's climate. With James Webb Space Telescope data-gathering in full swing, astronomers hope to study other hazy bodies in the solar system and beyond. The success of this Pluto study may lead to new models of climate formation on exoplanets with thick, layered atmospheres. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope uncovers Pluto's mysterious climate system When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015, it shattered the image of Pluto as a dull, frozen rock. Instead, it unveiled a dynamic world marked by vast icy plains, mountain ranges made of water ice, and most intriguingly, a bluish, multi-layered haze that enveloped the planet. This haze extended more than 185 miles (300 km) above Pluto's surface, surprising scientists with its complexity and reach. The discovery hinted that Pluto might have a more active atmosphere than previously believed — but at the time, its true impact remained uncertain. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Đăng ký Undo Pluto's haze role in climate regulation revealed Astronomers have now confirmed that Pluto's haze does more than decorate the sky, dedicatedly thanks to the infrared capabilities of JWST. This significantly cools the atmosphere. According to a study published in Nature Astronomy on June 2, this haze absorbs sunlight during the day and releases it as infrared radiation at night, effectively regulating the dwarf planet's temperature. 'This is unique in the solar system,' said Tanguy Bertrand, the study's lead author and an astronomer at the Paris Observatory. 'It's a new kind of climate.' Pluto's haze composition Pluto's haze is composed of complex organic molecules known as tholins, which form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks down methane and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. These particles then clump together into tiny haze layers that can trap and release heat. Back in 2017, planetary scientists proposed that this haze might be behind Pluto's unusually cold upper atmosphere measured at about -333°F (-203°C), or roughly 30 degrees cooler than models based on gas-only atmospheres had predicted. The idea was compelling, but proving it was another matter entirely. James Webb Space Telescope confirms Pluto's climate theory by separating signals from its Moon One major challenge in confirming the theory was Charon, Pluto's large moon, which orbits so closely that its thermal signal overlaps with Pluto's in most telescope data. This made it nearly impossible to isolate the haze's specific thermal impact. That changed with James Webb Space Telescope. In 2022, its superior infrared resolution allowed researchers to separate the emissions from Pluto and Charon. What they found confirmed the 2017 hypothesis: Pluto's mid-infrared brightness which is caused by its haze and perfectly matched earlier predictions. 'In planetary science, it's not common to have a hypothesis confirmed so quickly,' said Xi Zhang, who led the 2017 study. 'We feel pretty lucky and very excited.' What Pluto's skies reveal about the origins of life on Earth The discovery isn't just a milestone for understanding Pluto but it also opens up new possibilities for studying other hazy celestial bodies. Moons like Titan (Saturn) and Triton (Neptune) are shrouded in their own thick hazes and may exhibit similar atmospheric behaviors. Researchers even suggest that early Earth might have once resembled Pluto. Before oxygen filled our skies, Earth may have had a tholin-rich haze that acted like an insulating blanket, helping stabilize the climate and create conditions that allowed life to evolve. 'By studying Pluto's haze and chemistry,' Zhang said, 'we might get new insights into the conditions that made early Earth habitable.' Also Read | Why the US leads in UFO sightings; here's the surprising truth behind the numbers revealed
GMA Network
13-06-2025
- Science
- GMA Network
Webb telescope spots infant planets in different stages of development
An artist's rendition of the sun-like star YSES-1 in the center, with the planet YSES-1 b and its dusty circumplanetary disk (right) and the planet YSES-1 c with silicate clouds in its atmosphere (left), is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on June 11, 2025. Ellis Bogat/Handout via REUTERS/Illustration WASHINGTON - The James Webb Space Telescope has observed two large planets at different stages of infancy - one with an atmosphere brimming with dusty clouds and the other encircled by a disk of material - orbiting a young sun-like star in a discovery that illustrates the complex nature of how planetary systems develop. The two gas giant planets, both more massive than our solar system's largest planet Jupiter, were directly imaged by Webb in a planetary system located in the Milky Way galaxy about 310 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Musca. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Astronomers have detected more than 5,900 planets beyond our solar system - called exoplanets - since the 1990s, with less than 2% of these directly imaged like these two. It is rare to find exoplanets in their early developmental stages. The birth of a planetary system begins with a large cloud of gas and dust - called a molecular cloud - that collapses under its own gravity to form a central star. Leftover material spinning around the star in what is called a protoplanetary disk forms planets. This planetary system was observed by Webb very early in its developmental history. The star, named YSES-1, is about the same mass as the sun. The two planets orbit a long distance from the star, each probably needing thousands of years to complete a single orbit. While the sun is roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is approximately 16 million years old, a veritable newborn. The researchers were surprised to find that the two neonatal planets observed by Webb appeared to be at different stages of development. The innermost of the two has a mass about 14 times greater than Jupiter and orbits the star at a distance 160 times greater than Earth orbits the sun and more than five times as far as our solar system's outermost planet Neptune. The planet is surrounded by a disk of small-grained dust, a state one might expect in a very early stage of formation when it is still coalescing, or perhaps if there has been a collision of some kind or a moon is in the process of taking shape. Webb spotted water and carbon monoxide in its atmosphere. The outermost planet has a mass about six times greater than that of Jupiter and orbits the star at 320 times the distance of Earth to the sun. Its atmosphere is loaded with silicate clouds, differing from our solar system's gas giants. Webb also detected methane, water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It has no disk of material around it. The puzzling combination of traits presented by these two planets in the same system illustrates "the complex landscape that is planet formation and shows how much we truly don't know about how planetary systems came to be, including our own," said astrophysicist Kielan Hoch of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who led the study published this week in the journal Nature. "Theoretically, the planets should be forming around the same time, as planet formation happens fairly quickly, within about one million years," Hoch said. A real mystery is the location where the planets formed, Hoch added, noting that their orbital distance from the host star is greater than would be expected if they formed in the protoplanetary disk. "Furthermore, why one planet still retains material around it and one has distinct silicate clouds remains a big question. Do we expect all giant planets to form the same way and look the same if they formed in the same environment? These are questions we have been investigating for ages to place the formation of our own solar system into context," Hoch said. In addition to amassing a trove of discoveries about the early universe since becoming operational in 2022, Webb has made a major contribution to the study of exoplanets with its observations at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. "Webb is revealing all sorts of atmospheric physics and chemistry happening in exoplanets that we didn't know before, and is currently challenging every atmospheric model we used pre-Webb," Hoch said. — Reuters
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
James Webb telescope spots the earliest galaxy ever recorded
The James Webb Space Telescope spotted the earliest galaxy ever recorded. Looking through space is also looking through time: We see objects as they were when the light left them, so when we look at the Sun, we see it as it was eight minutes ago. Newly discovered galaxy MoM z14, which lies a mere 13.53 billion light years away, is also the most distant object ever sighted, so it appears as it was just 280 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age. As well as being an impressive technical feat, the discovery challenges physicists' models of galaxy formation, implying that they formed more quickly than previously believed.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Amazing Time Lapse Of Fading Supernova Spied By Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope captured imagery of supernova 2018 GV from 2018-2019. It was seen in barred spiral galaxy NGC 2525, which is located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. Credit: / footage courtesy: NASA, ESA, J. DePasquale (STScI), M. Kornmesser and M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble), A. Riess (STScI/JHU) and the SH0ES team, and the Digitized Sky Survey / produced & edited by Steve Spaleta
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Is Earth in danger? NASA's alarming discovery of a star being consumed by a black hole spark concerns
Astronomers have made a landmark finding in their quest for black holes where a supermassive black hole has been seen swallowing a star within the outer space of its host galaxy for the first time ever. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The landmark finding refutes the age-old belief that such types of catastrophic events take place only in the immediate vicinity of galaxies' centers. The strange event, called " AT2024tvd ," was 600 million light-years away and is the first-ever detection of an offset tidal disruption event (TDE) observed by optical sky surveys. Astronomers uncover a rare "wandering" black hole tearing apart a star A Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) is when a star strays too close to a black hole and gets torn apart by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. This is in fact known as "spaghettification," where the star gets stretched out into thin, filamentary threads, creating shock waves and unleashing a tremendous release of energy. This disastrous event sends energetic pulses of radiation that are detectable over many wavelengths of light, from X-rays to optical radiation. TDEs are typically associated with the violent gravitational forces around the centers of galaxies, where supermassive black holes reside. The "AT2024tvd" event is a breakthrough in our understanding of black holes. It was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and further verification through observations by 's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, and this discovery unlocked a black hole's activity in a most unexpected manner: a "wandering" supermassive black hole, of order 1 million solar masses in mass, not residing at the center of its host galaxy. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now This is the first time that offset TDEs have been detected by optical sky surveys, presenting a new glimpse of the mysterious population of nomadic black holes. Yuhan Yao, the lead study author and University of California, Berkeley astrophysicist, pointed to the significance of the find: "This is the first offset TDE found by optical sky surveys. It opens up the whole possibility of discovering this rare population of wanderlust black holes." New insights into wandering black holes through TDEs The star was engulfed by the black hole and in doing so triggered a brilliant flash of light—a more luminous and hotter supernova explosion than normal. So bright was the burst that it initiated a deluge of follow-up observations by a range of telescopes around the globe. These have cast invaluable light on the behavior of black holes, especially those that wander away from galaxy centers. The discovery not only reveals an oft-noted and never-before-seen phenomenon, but also gives us a new perspective on how black holes and their role in the universe can be studied. This short-term phenomenon was detected through optical sky surveys, which are designed to monitor transient astronomical phenomena. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) played a crucial role in detecting this event, and subsequent observations through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory confirmed its significance. According to Ryan Chornock, a ZTF team member, "Now we can use TDEs to find them [wandering black holes]." Optical surveys application in TDE detection can revolutionize the way black holes are searched and studied in the universe. The achievement provides scientists with a useful tool to detect rogue black holes, which were thought to be almost impossible to detect. Mysterious forces of black holes and their impact on the universe A black hole is a region of space in which the gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can get away. Black holes form when a massive star collapses in on itself because of its own gravity after it has burned all of its nuclear fuel. Black holes are invisible, but it could be possible to deduce that they exist based on observing the way that they alter the movement of nearby stars, gas, and light. An illustration is erratically moving stars or material sucked into a glowing disk surrounding a black hole as indirect signs of their presence. Can a black hole approach Earth? While sensational in its possibility, the likelihood of a black hole approaching Earth is extremely slim. The nearest known black hole is located thousands of light-years from Earth, and even a rogue black hole such as the one measured by this research is hundreds of millions of light-years from Earth. This provides some level of security for our solar system because black holes do not pose an immediate danger to Earth. This historic first-ever offset TDE discovery is a new chapter in black hole science, yielding new knowledge on the misbehavior of supermassive black holes and its effects. As the astrophysical community continues to study this event and other such events, we wait with bated breath for more light to be shed on the universe's most enigmatic objects. With the use of TDEs as a method of finding rogue black holes, scientists are set to explore even deeper the nature of these space monsters. Also Read |
