This self-made image composition allows for a straightforward comparison between the images of Webb and Hubble, as both captured the same galaxy during the same week.

NGC 2090 was one of many galaxies studied by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to refine the measurement of the Universe’s expansion rate, or ‘Hubble constant’. This can be done by observing a special type of variable stars named ‘Cepheids’ in relatively nearby galaxies. The Cepheid-based measurement, conducted in 1998, determined NGC 2090 to be 37 million light-years away from Earth. In contrast, according to the newest measurements, NGC 2090 should be slightly farther away, at 40 million light-years. To this day, Hubble is surveying galaxies in visible and ultraviolet light; alongside this Webb image and new Hubble image of NGC 2090 has also been published this week. 

RELEASE DATE

JWST: November 27, 2024

HST: November 25, 2024

CREDITS

JWST: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

HST: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

SOURCES

Full Image Article and Full Resolution Image Download

JWST: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/11/Webb_traces_swirling_spiral_arms_in_infrared

HST: https://esahubble.org/images/potw2448a/

The spiral galaxy  NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba. This combination of data from Webb’s MIRI and  NIRCam instruments shows the galaxy’s two winding spiral arms and the swirling gas and dust of its disc in magnificent and unique detail. 

NGC 2090 had been well studied as a very prominent nearby example of star formation. Described as a ‘flocculent’ spiral, this galaxy has a patchy, dusty disc and arms that are flaky or not visible at all. We can see those patterns well in Hubble's visible-light images. However, Webb’s NIRCam near-infrared data reveal the spiral arms with remarkable clarity.

At the same time, Webb’s MIRI captures the mid-infrared light from the carbon-based compounds along the many strands of gas and dust. This MIRI data is pictured as red in the Webb image. 

RELEASE DATE

November 27, 2024

CREDITS

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

SOURCE

Full Image Article and Full Resolution Image Download: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/11/Webb_traces_swirling_spiral_arms_in_infrared

NASA’s Webb Reveals Cosmic Cliffs, Glittering Landscape of Star Birth

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Located roughly 7,600 light-years away, NGC 3324 was imaged by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this image reveals for the first time emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that are completely hidden in visible-light pictures. Because of Webb’s sensitivity to infrared light, it can peer through cosmic dust to see these objects.

RELEASE DATE

July 12, 2022

CREDITS

NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

SOURCE

Full Image Article and Full-resolution Image Download: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-webb-reveals-cosmic-cliffs-glittering-landscape-of-star-birth/

This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of star-forming region NGC 604 shows how stellar winds from bright, hot young stars carve out cavities in surrounding gas and dust.

The bright orange streaks in this image signify the presence of carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. As you travel further from the immediate cavities of dust where the star is forming, the deeper red signifies molecular hydrogen. This cooler gas is a prime environment for star formation. Hydrogen ionized by ultraviolet radiation appears as a white and blue ghostly glow.

NGC 604 is located in the Triangulum galaxy (M33), 2.73 million light-years away from Earth. It provides an opportunity for astronomers to study a high concentration of very young, massive stars in a relatively nearby region.

This image of the Horsehead Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope focuses on a portion of the horse’s “mane” that is about 0.8 light-years in width. It was taken with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-infrared Camera).

The ethereal clouds that appear blue at the bottom of the image are filled with a variety of materials including hydrogen, methane, and water ice. Red-colored wisps extending above the main nebula represent both atomic and molecular hydrogen.

In this area, known as a photodissociation region, ultraviolet light from nearby young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionized gas above and the nebula below. As with many Webb images, distant galaxies are sprinkled in the background.

This image is composed of light at wavelengths of 1.4 and 2.5 microns (represented in blue), 3.0 and 3.23 microns (cyan), 3.35 microns (green), 4.3 microns (yellow), and 4.7 and 4.05 microns (red).

The question is basically in the title. All information I can find is the phrase "It took 30 days for the JWST to travel nearly a million miles". But let's imagine I have a modern space ship and I want to visit the telescope. How long would it take to get there?

Welp saying “cut off contact for good” is harsh but I want to know why JWST couldn’t have just had more fuel to power itself and im questioning myself how would Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will take over and when I learn about the Roman telescope I immediately think it’s gonna be like Hubble still not great so I need to spill out all my thoughts here right now.

JWST observed this well-studied high redshift proto cluster, shown here in a mosaic of mutli-band NIRCam images that was published in a recent paper. The authors studied the particular wavelength of light associated with an excited hydrogen energy level (specifically the Paschen beta, Paβ, which in vacuum is λ=1282nm but at redshift z=2.2 corresponds to the NIRCam filter around λ=4100nm), as a way to estimate the evolution and star formation rates of galaxies within this actively growing proto cluster.

arxiv paper link (accepted to the Astrophysical Journal): https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03362v1

Author's caption: "Spatial distribution of Paschen Beta Emitter (PBE) candidates (squares) and known Hydrogen Alpha Emitters (HAEs, circles) around the Spiderweb radio galaxy. RGB filters: F410M/F182M/F115W, image made by stiff (Bertin 2012). The green lines depict the survey area of the Hα line imaging. The dashed circle indicates the virial radius (r500 = 220 proper kpc) based on the X-ray measurement by Tozzi et al. (2022a)"

Figure 3 from an October 16th arxiv paper submitted to ApJ): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.11821

Author's caption: "Three-color composite image of the MIRI field (Figure 2) in our JWST survey of M33, with MIRI filters F560W (green) and F2100W (red), and the IRAC 4.5 μm (blue). White circles represent locations of confirmed SNRs. The brightest and most prominent MIRI SNRs (see Section 3.1) in the field are labeled in larger font"

(with brightness/contrast/sharpening added by me)

Hi,

I would like to know if there's a youtube channel (or more than one) that take the new release James Webb images and talk about it, analyse it, break them down.

Thank you