Those First Results from JWST

As promised in my post earlier today, we gathered in a small lecture theatre in Maynooth to watch the “reveal” of various new images and other data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The images are indeed wonderful and spectacular, but the video stream was excruciatingly bad to watch, with more technical glitches than I’ve had hot dinners. It was like an astronomical version of Acorn Antiques!

Anyway, you can find them all the new results together with explanations and descriptions here so Ill just put up a gallery here:

Carina Nebula

Stephan’s Quintet

Southern Ring Nebula

Slitless Spectroscopy of WASP 96-b

Those are the four results released today. This image was previewed last night and appeared in my post earlier today:

I couldn’t resist, however, adding this spectrum of a faint reddish galaxy in the above image:

This spectrum is taken using the NIRSpec instrument on JWST. The observed wavelength along the horizontal axis is measured in microns. If I’ve got the line identifications correct I think this galaxy is at an amazing redshift of about z=8.5. Amazing. High redshift galaxy spectra obtained are usually a lot rattier than this. I think this demonstrates that JWST is going to revolutionize the field of galaxy formation.

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Hubble Flash

Just a quick post to point out that brand new “Early Release” images have just appeared following the recent refurbishment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

You can read the accompanying press release here, so I’ll just post this brief description:

These four images are among the first observations made by the new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the upgraded NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

The image at top left shows NGC 6302, a butterfly-shaped nebula surrounding a dying star. At top right is a picture of a clash among members of a galactic grouping called Stephan’s Quintet. The image at bottom left gives viewers a panoramic portrait of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of Omega Centauri, a giant globular cluster. At bottom right, an eerie pillar of star birth in the Carina Nebula rises from a sea of greenish-colored clouds.

My own favourite has to be Stephan’s Quintet, but they all look pretty fantastic.