How disorderly young galaxies grow up and mature

Using a supercomputer, the researchers created a high-resolution simulation

Hi-res image

Using a supercomputer simulation, a research team at Lund University in Sweden has succeeded in following the development of a galaxy over a span of 13.8 billion years. The study shows how, due to interstellar frontal collisions, young and chaotic galaxies over time mature into spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way.

Soon after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe was an unruly place. Galaxies constantly collided. Stars formed at an enormous rate inside gigantic gas clouds. However, after a few billion years of intergalactic chaos, the unruly, embryonic galaxies became more stable and over time matured into well-ordered spiral galaxies. The exact course of these developments has long been a mystery to the world’s astronomers. However, in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers have been able to provide some clarity on the matter.

“Using a supercomputer, we have created a high-resolution simulation that provides a detailed picture of a galaxy’s development since the Big Bang, and how young chaotic galaxies transition into well-ordered spirals” says Oscar Agertz, astronomy researcher at Lund University.

In the study, the astronomers, led by Oscar Agertz and Florent Renaud, use the Milky Way’s stars as a starting point. The stars act as time capsules that divulge secrets about distant epochs and the environment in which they were formed. Their positions, speeds and amounts of various chemical elements can therefore, with the assistance of computer simulations, help us understand how our own galaxy was formed.

“We have discovered that when two large galaxies collide, a new disc can be created around the old one due to the enormous inflows of star-forming gas. Our simulation shows that the old and new discs slowly merged over a period of several billion years. This is something that not only resulted in a stable spiral galaxy, but also in populations of stars that are similar to those in the Milky Way”, says Florent Renaud, astronomy researcher at Lund University.

A compact group of interacting galaxies, similar to the chaos of the early days of the Universe

Credit: NASA/ESA, and the HUBBLE SM4 ERO Team. Hi-res image

The new findings will help astronomers to interpret current and future mappings of the Milky Way. The study points to a new direction for research in which the main focus will be on the interaction between large galaxy collisions and how spiral galaxies’ discs are formed. The research team in Lund has already started new super computer simulations in cooperation with the research infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe).

“With the current study and our new computer simulations we will generate a lot of information which means we can better understand the Milky Way’s fascinating life since the beginning of the Universe”, concludes Oscar Agertz.

The University of Surrey participated in the research together with Lund University.

Contact:

Oscar Agertz, associate senior lecturer

Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Physics, Lund University
+46 700 45 22 20
oscar.agertz@astro.lu.se

Source: Lund University/News

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Unravelling the mystery of brown dwarfs

Artist’s illustration showing the five brown dwarfs (TOIs) as well as the Sun, Jupiter and a low mass star for reference

Credit: Thibaut Roger

Brown dwarfs are astronomical objects with masses between those of planets and stars. The question of where exactly the limits of their mass lie remains a matter of debate, especially since their constitution is very similar to that of low-mass stars. So how do we know whether we are dealing with a brown dwarf or a very low mass star? An international team, led by scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, in collaboration with the University of Bern, has identified five objects that have masses near the border separating stars and brown dwarfs that could help scientists understand the nature of these mysterious objects. The results can be found in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Like Jupiter and other giant gas planets, stars are mainly made of hydrogen and helium. But unlike gas planets, stars are so massive and their gravitational force so powerful that hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium, releasing huge amounts of energy and light.

Nolan Grieves is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Geneva and an associate member of the NCCR PlanetS.

‘Failed stars’

Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, are not massive enough to fuse hydrogen and therefore cannot produce the enormous amount of light and heat of stars. Instead, they fuse relatively small stores of a heavier atomic version of hydrogen: deuterium. This process is less efficient and the light from brown dwarfs is much weaker than that from stars. This is why scientists often refer to them as ‘failed stars’.

“However, we still do not know exactly where the mass limits of brown dwarfs lie, limits that allow them to be distinguished from low-mass stars that can burn hydrogen for many billions of years, whereas a brown dwarf will have a short burning stage and then a colder life” points out Nolan Grieves, a researcher in the Department of Astronomy at the UNIGE’s Faculty of Science, a member of the NCCR PlanetS and the study’s first author. “These limits vary depending on the chemical composition of the brown dwarf, for example, or the way it formed, as well as its initial radius,” he explains. To get a better idea of what these mysterious objects are, we need to study examples in detail. But it turns out that they are rather rare. “So far, we have only accurately characterised about 30 brown dwarfs,” says the Geneva-based researcher. Compared to the hundreds of planets that astronomers know in detail, this is very few. All the more so if one considers that their larger size makes brown dwarfs easier to detect than planets.

Monika Lendl is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Geneva and member of the NCCR PlanetS

François Bouchy is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Geneva and a member of the NCCR PlanetS

New pieces to the puzzle

Today, the international team characterized five companions that were originally identified with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) as TESS objects of interest (TOI) – TOI-148, TOI-587, TOI-681, TOI-746 and TOI-1213. These are called ‘companions’ because they orbit their respective host stars. They do so with periods of 5 to 27 days, have radii between 0.81 and 1.66 times that of Jupiter and are between 77 and 98 times more massive. This places them on the borderline between brown dwarfs and stars.

These five new objects therefore contain valuable information. “Each new discovery reveals additional clues about the nature of brown dwarfs and gives us a better understanding of how they form and why they are so rare,” says Monika Lendl, a researcher in the Department of Astronomy at the UNIGE and a member of the NCCR PlanetS.

One of the clues the scientists found to show these objects are brown dwarfs is the relationship between their size and age, as explained by François Bouchy, professor at UNIGE and member of the NCCR PlanetS: “Brown dwarfs are supposed to shrink over time as they burn up their deuterium reserves and cool down. Here we found that the two oldest objects, TOI 148 and 746, have a smaller radius, while the two younger companions have larger radii.”

Yet these objects are so close to the limit that they could just as easily be very low-mass stars, and astronomers are still unsure whether they are brown dwarfs. “Even with these additional objects, we still lack the numbers to draw definitive conclusions about the differences between brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. Further studies are needed to find out more,” concludes Grieves.

Publication details: Grieves et al., Populating the brown dwarf and stellar boundary: Five stars with transiting companions near the hydrogen-burning mass limit, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2021, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202141145

Source: National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS (NCCR)/News

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Hubble Sees Cosmic Quintuple

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt - Hi-res image

Clustered at the center of this image are six brilliant spots of light, four of them creating a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but is actually two separate galaxies and one distant quasar imaged four times. Data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is the result of the two central galaxies, which are in the foreground, acting as a lens.

The four bright points around the galaxy pair, and the fainter one in the very center, are in fact five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason we see this quintuple effect is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass – such as a pair of galaxies – causes the fabric of space to warp. When light from a distant object travels through that gravitationally warped space, it is magnified and bent around the huge mass. This allows humans here on Earth to observe multiple, magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies farther away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The galaxy pair’s enormous mass bent and magnified the light from the distant quasar, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxies are surrounded by four quasars – when in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaged the trio in spectacular detail. It was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. WFC3 continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images 12 years after its installation.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Source: NASA/Solar System and Beyond

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New class of habitable exoplanets are 'a big step forward' in the search for life

Hycean Planets

A new class of exoplanet very different to our own, but which could support life, has been identified by astronomers, which could greatly accelerate the search for life outside our Solar System.

In the search for life elsewhere, astronomers have mostly looked for planets of a similar size, mass, temperature and atmospheric composition to Earth. However, astronomers from the University of Cambridge believe there are more promising possibilities out there.

The researchers have identified a new class of habitable planets, dubbed ‘Hycean’ planets – ocean-covered planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres – which are more numerous and observable than Earth-like planets.

The researchers say the results, reported in The Astrophysical Journal, could mean that finding biosignatures of life outside our Solar System within the next few years is a real possibility.

“Hycean planets open a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere,” said Dr Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the research.

Many of the prime Hycean candidates identified by the researchers are bigger and hotter than Earth, but still have the characteristics to host large oceans that could support microbial life similar to that found in some of Earth’s most extreme aquatic environments.

These planets also allow for a far wider habitable zone, or ‘Goldilocks zone’, compared to Earth-like planets. This means that they could still support life even though they lie outside the range where a planet similar to Earth would need to be in order to be habitable.

Thousands of planets outside our Solar System have been discovered since the first exoplanet was identified nearly 30 years ago. The vast majority are planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune and are often referred to as ‘super-Earths’ or ‘mini-Neptunes’: they can be predominantly rocky or ice giants with hydrogen-rich atmospheres, or something in between.

Most mini-Neptunes are over 1.6 times the size of Earth: smaller than Neptune but too big to have rocky interiors like Earth. Earlier studies of such planets have found that the pressure and temperature beneath their hydrogen-rich atmospheres would be too high to support life.

However, a recent study on the mini-Neptune K2-18b by Madhusudhan’s team found that in certain conditions these planets could support life. The result led to a detailed investigation into the full range of planetary and stellar properties for which these conditions are possible, which known exoplanets may satisfy those conditions, and whether their biosignatures may be observable.

The investigation led the researchers to identify a new class of planets, Hycean planets, with massive planet-wide oceans beneath hydrogen-rich atmospheres. Hycean planets can be up to 2.6 times larger than Earth and have atmospheric temperatures up to nearly 200 degrees Celsius, depending on their host stars, but their oceanic conditions could be similar to those conducive for microbial life in Earth’s oceans. Such planets also include tidally locked ‘dark’ Hycean worlds that may have habitable conditions only on their permanent night sides, and ‘cold’ Hycean worlds that receive little radiation from their stars.

Planets of this size dominate the known exoplanet population, although they have not been studied in nearly as much detail as super-Earths. Hycean worlds are likely quite common, meaning that the most promising places to look for life elsewhere in the Galaxy may have been hiding in plain sight.

However, size alone is not enough to confirm whether a planet is Hycean: other aspects such as mass, temperature and atmospheric properties are required for confirmation.

When trying to determine what the conditions are like on a planet many light years away, astronomers first need to determine whether the planet lies in the habitable zone of its star, and then look for molecular signatures to infer the planet’s atmospheric and internal structure, which govern the surface conditions, presence of oceans and potential for life.

Astronomers also look for certain biosignatures which could indicate the possibility of life. Most often, these are oxygen, ozone, methane and nitrous oxide, which are all present on Earth. There are also a number of other biomarkers, such as methyl chloride and dimethyl sulphide, that are less abundant on Earth but can be promising indicators of life on planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres where oxygen or ozone may not be as abundant.

“Essentially, when we’ve been looking for these various molecular signatures, we have been focusing on planets similar to Earth, which is a reasonable place to start,” said Madhusudhan. “But we think Hycean planets offer a better chance of finding several trace biosignatures.”

“It's exciting that habitable conditions could exist on planets so different from Earth,” said co-author Anjali Piette, also from Cambridge.

Madhusudhan and his team found that a number of trace terrestrial biomarkers expected to be present in Hycean atmospheres would be readily detectable with spectroscopic observations in the near future. The larger sizes, higher temperatures and hydrogen-rich atmospheres of Hycean planets make their atmospheric signatures much more detectable than Earth-like planets.

The Cambridge team identified a sizeable sample of potential Hycean worlds which are prime candidates for detailed study with next-generation telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is due to be launched later this year. These planets all orbit red dwarf stars between 35-150 light years away: close by astronomical standards. Already planned JWST observations of the most promising candidate, K2-18b, could lead to the detection of one or more biosignature molecules.

“A biosignature detection would transform our understanding of life in the universe,” said Madhusudhan. “We need to be open about where we expect to find life and what form that life could take, as nature continues to surprise us in often unimaginable ways.”

Reference:

Nikku Madhusudhan, Anjali A. A. Piette, and Savvas Constantinou. ‘Habitability and Biosignatures of Hycean Worlds.’ The Astrophysical Journal (2021). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abfd9c

(The paper can also be viewed on arXiv.)

Source: University of Cambridge/Research News

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Red Giants and Neutron Stars and Gravitational Waves, Oh My!

An artist's depiction of a Thorne-Żytkow Object with a neutron star core and a red giant envelope

Credit: Astronomy magazine

Artist’s illustration of a red giant star expelling mass at the end of its life

Credit:JAXA

Title: Prospects for Multimessenger Observations of Thorne-Żytkow Objects
Authors: Lindsay DeMarchi, J. R. Sanders, and Emily M. Levesque
First Author’s Institution: Northwestern University
Status: Published in ApJ

The universe is full of different types of stars, including big ones called red giants. But what if some of those red giants are hiding another star inside them?

Two Stars for the Price of One?

A Thorne-Żytkow object (TZO) is a very special type of hybrid object that consists of two stars: a red giant (or supergiant) and a neutron star that lies at the core of the red giant. One way a TZO could be created is from the evolution of a close binary of two massive stars (> 8 solar masses) orbiting each other. Once the more massive star from the pair reaches the end of its lifetime, it will go supernova and leave behind a small, dense neutron star. This process could cause the neutron star and the remaining massive star to inspiral, allowing the red giant to swallow the tiny, but dense, neutron star — perhaps the most epic fit of celestial sibling jealousy!

The Challenges of Detecting a TZO

Though TZOs were first proposed in 1977, they remain extremely hard to detect and have never been observationally confirmed to exist. One of the issues is that a TZO doesn’t look that different from a red giant. Due to the presence of the neutron star core, however, TZOs should have different chemical abundances than red giants. Using this clue, one of the authors of today’s paper, Dr. Emily Levesque, identified a strong TZO candidate in the Small Magellanic Cloud in 2014 (read a bite about it here!). This star (known as HV 2112) has the chemical composition expected for TZOs — though it still may simply be a weird red giant without a neutron star core.

Besides TZOs being difficult to “visually” distinguish from red giants, they can also be difficult to gravitationally distinguish from standalone neutron stars. While it’s forming, a TZO will emit gravitational waves (GWs) at ~10 Hz frequencies that ground-based detectors like LIGO can’t see due to seismic noise coming from the Earth. After formation, a TZO will emit gravitational waves from its neutron core “spinning down” (spinning slower and slower). But spinning down is what neutron stars living outside of TZOs are also doing (we can see this happen with pulsars, for example), making it hard to tell TZOs and standalone neutron stars apart using just gravitational waves.

Where Does One Find a TZO?

The good news is that gravitational waves and visual identification of red giants can be used in unison to better identify TZOs! To that end, the authors of today’s paper identified a few nearby red (super)giant-rich regions that could be good candidates for hosting TZOs. They settled on one group of red supergiants in a region of the sky called the Scutum–Crux arm. The region is named RSGC1 and is about 6.6 kpc away from Earth. It is also very compact, about 10 million years old, and has around 210 massive stars. Its distance and small size make it ideal to scan for gravitational signatures, while its age and massive star population mean TZOs would have had time and the opportunity to form.

The authors carefully modeled what the gravitational signature of a TZO located in RSGC1 would look like (see the figure below). They took into account the properties of the red giant cluster, such as its distance and size. They also considered how fast neutron stars tend to spin down, which depends on their spin frequency to some power n, where 2 < n < 7. The authors consider a range of options for n that correspond to three different models for how the neutron star at the center of the TZO would spin down. Finally, they use what is known as the spindown limit, meaning that they assume all the energy from the slowing of the neutron star’s rotation is released as GWs. In reality, some of this energy could be used elsewhere — meaning that their calculation below is an upper limit for GW signals of TZOs in RSGC1.

Plot of strain — the strength of gravitational waves that LIGO is sensitive to — vs. frequency range of the LIGO detector. The curved black line shows the noise curve of the LIGO detector: LIGO can detect everything above the curve. The authors also show their calculations for GW signatures of TZOs in RSGC1 given three different models for neutron star spin as horizontal lines, shown in red (n=2), blue (n=5), and gray (n=7). All three lines are well above the LIGO sensitivity curve at frequencies greater than about 20 Hz, meaning that LIGO could indeed help detect potential TZOs in RSGC1! Credit: DeMarchi et al. 2021.

A New Tool for Finding TZOs

The authors have shown that the expected gravitational signatures for TZOs in RSGC1 are well above the noise threshold of LIGO, meaning that any neutron star cores would likely be detectable! The next step is to look for such signatures in archival LIGO data and compare them with observational data. If astronomers can find both a gravitational wave signature of a neutron star and a visual signature of a red giant emanating from the same source, it will be the strongest evidence yet of a TZO: a star within a star!

Original astrobite edited by James Negus.

About the author, Luna Zagorac:

I am a PhD candidate in the Physics Department at Yale University. My research focus is ultra light (or fuzzy) dark matter in simulations and observations. I’m also a Franke Fellow in the Natural Sciences & Humanities at Yale working on a project on Egyptian archaeoastronomy, another passion of mine. When I’m not writing code or deciphering glyphs, I can usually be found reading, doodling, or drinking coffee.

By Astrobites

Source: American Astronomical Society (AAS/Nova)

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Invisible Colors: Why Astronomers Use Different Radio Bands

A 21-cm view of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33). The rainbow of colors is due to the rotation of the galaxy, which Doppler-shifts the radio light. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF

Radio light comes in a rainbow of colors. We see these colors with radio bands, and each band has a story to tell about the universe.

Radio astronomers view the universe in several ranges of wavelengths we call bands. The Very Large Array (VLA) uses wavelengths ranging from 4 meters to less than a centimeter. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) uses radio bands ranging from a couple of centimeters to a third of a millimeter. But why do radio telescopes use such a wide range of wavelengths? The answer lies in the many ways that objects emit radio light, and how this light interacts with the gas and dust of interstellar space.

Long radio wavelengths, such as those seen by the VLA’s Band 4, are typically produced by ionized gas. It lets us see where hot plasma is located in our galaxy. These long wavelengths are also useful because most neutral gas is transparent at these wavelengths. This means very little of this light is absorbed as it travels through space. Shorter wavelengths of light are often emitted by particular atoms or molecules. One of the most important of these is the 21-centimeter line, which is emitted by neutral hydrogen. This wavelength is one of the best ways to observe the distribution of matter in a galaxy since hydrogen is by far the most abundant element in the universe.

Wavelengths in the 10-cm to 20-cm range are particularly good for radio sky surveys, such as the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS). Radio galaxies are particularly bright in this range as are the jets emitted by supermassive black holes. By scanning the sky at these wavelengths, VLASS has captured images of nearly 10 million radio sources.

Light with wavelengths of a centimeter or two is often emitted through a process known as synchrotron radiation . When electrons speed through a strong magnetic field, the magnetic field forces them to move in tight spirals along the magnetic field lines. Because of this, they emit radio light. Synchrotron radiation is particularly useful at mapping the magnetic fields near black holes. Another process that emits light in this range is known as a maser or microwave laser. We’re most familiar with simple laser pointers that emit coherent red light, but in interstellar space pockets of water can emit coherent light with a wavelength of 1.3 centimeters. Since these water masers emit a very specific wavelength of light, they can be used to measure the rate at which the universe expands.

Black hole-powered radio galaxies discovered by VLASS
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF

Radio wavelengths on the order of a millimeter are particularly useful for studying cold gas and dust. Dust grains in interstellar space emit light with wavelengths on the order of their size, and since much of this dust is about a millimeter in size, that’s the wavelength where they emit the most light. These short wavelengths can be difficult to observe, in part because our atmosphere absorbs much of the light at these wavelengths. But they are also vitally important for the study of young planetary systems. ALMA has been able to capture disks of gas and dust around young stars and has even seen how gaps form within these disks as young planets begin to form. It is revolutionizing our understanding of how exoplanets form.

ALMA Observatory image of the young star HL Tau and its protoplanetary disk. One of the best images ever of planet formation, this image reveals multiple rings and gaps that herald the presence of emerging planets as they sweep their orbits clear of dust and gas. Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); C. Brogan, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

But perhaps one of the more interesting radio bands is ALMA’s Band 6, which captures light with wavelengths from 1.1 – 1.4 mm. It has been used to study how red giant stars generate heat, and the distribution of molecules in planetary nebulae. But it was also used to create one of the most powerful radio images of recent years, that of the supermassive black hole in the heart of galaxy M87. Band 6 receivers were used on radio telescopes across the world as part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), and the data they gathered was combined to create the first direct image of a black hole.

Radio light is invisible to our eyes, so it’s easy to think of all radio light as the same. But radio is filled with colors, just as the colors of visible light we can see, and radio astronomy is at its most powerful when we use all the colors of its rainbow.

Source:National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)/News

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Fastest Orbiting Asteroid Discovered at NOIRLab’s CTIO

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Illustration showing the asteroid 2021 PH27 inside Mercury’s orbit 

 

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Discovery observations of 2021 PH27 from 13 August 2021 (annotated) 

 

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Infographic showing the unusually short orbit of 2021 PH27 

 

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Discovery image of 2021 PH27 from 13 August 2021 (unannotated) 

 

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Infographic showing the unusually short orbit of 2021 PH27 (Spanish) 

 

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View of orbits face-on 

 

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View of orbits face-on (Spanish)

 

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The unusually short orbit of 2021 PH27 (no annotations)

 

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Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope under the stars 

 

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Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope 

 

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Dark Energy Cam under construction

 

 

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About a kilometer across, space rock 2021 PH27 is the Sun’s nearest neighbor

Using the powerful 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile, astronomers just ten days ago discovered an asteroid with the shortest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System. The orbit of the approximately 1-kilometer-diameter asteroid takes it as close as 20 million kilometers (12 million miles or 0.13 au), from the Sun every 113 days. Asteroid 2021 PH27, revealed in images acquired during twilight, also has the smallest mean distance (semi-major axis) of any known asteroid in our Solar System — only Mercury has a shorter period and smaller semi-major axis. The asteroid is so close to the Sun’s massive gravitational field, it experiences the largest general relativistic effects of any known Solar System object.

The asteroid designated 2021 PH₂₇ was discovered by Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Science in data collected by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. The discovery images of the asteroid were taken by Ian Dell’antonio and Shenming Fu of Brown University in the twilight skies on the evening of 13 August 2021. Sheppard had teamed up with Dell’antonio and Fu while conducting observations with DECam for the Local Volume Complete Cluster Survey, which is studying most of the massive galaxy clusters in the local Universe [1]. They took time out from observing some of the largest objects millions of light-years away to search for far smaller objects — asteroids — closer to home.

One of the highest-performance, wide-field CCD imagers in the world, DECam was designed for the Dark Energy Survey (DES) funded by the DOE, was built and tested at DOE’s Fermilab, and was operated by the DOE and NSF between 2013 and 2019. At present DECam is used for programs covering a huge range of science. The DECam science archive is curated by the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC). CTIO and CSDC are programs of NSF’s NOIRLab. 

Twilight, just after sunset or before sunrise, is the best time to hunt for asteroids that are interior to Earth’s orbit, in the direction of the two innermost planets, Mercury and Venus. As any stargazer will tell you, Mercury and Venus never appear to get very far from the Sun in the sky and are always best visible near sunrise or sunset. The same holds for asteroids that also orbit close to the Sun.

Following 2021 PH₂₇’s discovery, David Tholen of the University of Hawai‘i measured the asteroid’s position and predicted where it could be observed the following evening. Subsequently, on 14 August 2021, it was observed once more by DECam, and also by the Magellan Telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Then, on the evening of the 15th, Marco Micheli of the European Space Agency used the Las Cumbres Observatory network of 1- to 2-meter telescopes to observe it from CTIO in Chile and from South Africa, in addition to further observations from DECam and Magellan, as astronomers postponed their originally scheduled observations to get a sight of the newly found asteroid. 

“Though telescope time for astronomers is very precious, the international nature and love of the unknown make astronomers very willing to override their own science and observations to follow up new, interesting discoveries like this,” says Sheppard.

Planets and asteroids orbit the Sun in elliptical (or oval-shaped) orbits, with the widest axis of the ellipse having a radius described as the semi-major axis. 2021 PH₂₇ has a semi-major axis of 70 million kilometers (43 million miles or 0.46 au), giving it a 113-day orbital period on a elongated orbit that crosses the orbits of both Mercury and Venus [2]. 

It may have begun life in the main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter and got dislodged by gravitational disturbances from the inner planets that drew it closer to the Sun. Its high orbital inclination of 32 degrees suggests, however, that it might instead be an extinct comet from the outer Solar System that got captured into a closer short-period orbit when passing near one of the terrestrial planets. Future observations of the asteroid will shed more light on its origins.

Its orbit is probably also unstable over long periods of time, and it will likely eventually either collide with Mercury, Venus or the Sun in a few million years, or be ejected from the inner Solar System by the inner planets’ gravitational influence.

Astronomers have a hard time finding these interior asteroids because they are very often hidden by the glare of the Sun. When asteroids get so close to our nearest star, they experience a variety of stresses, such as thermal stresses from the Sun’s heat, and physical stresses from gravitational tidal forces. These stresses could cause some of the more fragile asteroids to break up.

“The fraction of asteroids interior to Earth and Venus compared to exterior will give us insights into the strength and make-up of these objects,” says Sheppard. If the population of asteroids on similar orbits to 2021 PH₂₇ appears depleted, it could tell astronomers what fraction of near-Earth asteroids are piles of rubble that are loosely held together, as opposed to solid chunks of rock, which could have consequences for asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth and how we might deflect them.

“Understanding the population of asteroids interior to Earth’s orbit is important to complete the census of asteroids near Earth, including some of the most likely Earth impactors that may approach Earth during daylight and that cannot easily be discovered in most surveys that are observing at night, away from the Sun,” says Sheppard. He adds that since 2021 PH₂₇ approaches so close to the Sun, “...its surface temperature gets to almost 500 degrees C (around 900 degrees F) at closest approach, hot enough to melt lead”.

Because 2021 PH₂₇ is so close to the Sun’s massive gravitational field, it experiences the largest general relativistic effects of any known Solar System object. This reveals itself as a slight angular deviation in the asteroid’s elliptical orbit over time, a movement called precession, which amounts to about one arcminute per century [3].

The asteroid is now entering solar conjunction when from our point of view it is seen to move behind the Sun. It is expected to return to visibility from Earth early in 2022, when new observations will be able to determine its orbit in more detail, allowing the asteroid to get an official name.

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Notes

 

[1] The Local Volume Complete Cluster Survey (LoVoCCS) is an NSF’s NOIRLab survey program that is using DECam to measure the dark matter distribution and the galaxy population in 107 nearby galaxy clusters. These deep exposures will allow a clean comparison of faint variable objects when combined with data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

[2] 2021 PH₂₇ is only one of around 20 known Atira asteroids that have their orbits completely interior to the Earth’s orbit.

[3] Observation of Mercury’s precession puzzled scientists until Einstein’s general theory of relativity explained its orbital adjustments over time. 2021 PH₂₇’s precession is even faster than Mercury’s.

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More Information 

This research was reported to the Minor Planet Center.

NSF’s NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the US center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the international Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory (operated in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O'odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.

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Earth and Planets Laboratory
Carnegie Institution for Science
Email: ssheppard@carnegiescience.edu

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NSF’s NOIRLab
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Email: lars.christensen@noirlab.edu

 

 Source:  NSF’s NOIRLab/News

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Most detailed-ever images of galaxies revealed using LOFAR

A compilation of the science results. Credit from left to right starting at the top: N. Ramírez-Olivencia et el. [radio]; NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), edited by R. Cumming [optical], C. Groeneveld, R. Timmerman; LOFAR & Hubble Space Telescope,. Kukreti; LOFAR & Sloan Digital Sky Survey, A. Kappes, F. Sweijen; LOFAR & DESI Legacy Imaging Survey, S. Badole; NASA, ESA & L. Calcada, Graphics: W.L. Williams.

After almost a decade of work, an international team of astronomers has published the most detailed images yet seen of galaxies beyond our own, revealing their inner workings in unprecedented detail. The images were created from data collected by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope built and maintained by ASTRON, LOFAR is a network of more than 70,000 small antennae spread across nine European counties, with its core in Exloo, the Netherlands. The results come from the team’s years of work, led by Dr Leah Morabito at Durham University. The team was supported in the UK by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

As well as supporting science exploitation, STFC also funds the UK subscription to LOFAR including upgrade costs and operation of its LOFAR station in Hampshire.

Revealing a hidden universe of light in HD

The universe is awash with electromagnetic radiation, of which visible light comprises just the tiniest slice. From short-wavelength gamma rays and X-rays, to long-wavelength microwave and radio waves, each part of the light spectrum reveals something unique about the universe. The LOFAR network captures images at FM radio frequencies that, unlike shorter wavelength sources like visible light, are not blocked by the clouds of dust and gas that can cover astronomical objects. Regions of space that seem dark to our eyes, actually burn brightly in radio waves – allowing astronomers to peer into star-forming regions or into the heart of galaxies themselves.

The new images, made possible because of the international nature of the collaboration, push the boundaries of what we know about galaxies and super-massive black holes. A special issue of the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics is dedicated to 11 research papers describing these images and the scientific results.

Better resolution by working together

The images reveal the inner-workings of nearby and distant galaxies at a resolution 20 times sharper than typical LOFAR images. This was made possible by the unique way the team made use of the array.

The 70,000+ LOFAR antennae are spread across Europe, with the majority being located in the Netherlands. In standard operation, only the signals from antennae located in the Netherlands are combined, and creates a ‘virtual’ telescope with a collecting ‘lens' with a diameter of 120 km. By using the signals from all of the European antennae, the team have increased the diameter of the ‘lens’ to almost 2,000 km, which provides a twenty-fold increase in resolution.

Unlike conventional array antennae that combine multiple signals in real time to produce images, LOFAR uses a new concept where the signals collected by each antenna are digitised, transported to central processor, and then combined to create an image. Each LOFAR image is the result of combining the signals from more than 70,000 antennae, which is what makes their extraordinary resolution possible.

This shows real radio galaxies from Morabito et al. (2021). The gif fades from the standard resolution to the high resolution, showing the detail we can see by using the new techniques. Credit: L.K. Morabito; LOFAR Surveys KSP.

Revealing jets and outflows from super-massive black holes

Super-massive black holes can be found lurking at the heart of many galaxies and many of these are ‘active’ black holes that devour in-falling matter and belch it back out into the cosmos as powerful jets and outflows of radiation. These jets are invisible to the naked eye, but they burn bright in radio waves and it is these that the new high-resolution images have focused upon.

Dr Neal Jackson of The University of Manchester, said: “These high resolution images allow us to zoom in to see what’s really going on when super-massive black holes launch radio jets, which wasn’t possible before at frequencies near the FM radio band,”

The team’s work forms the basis of nine scientific studies that reveal new information on the inner structure of radio jets in a variety of different galaxies.

Hercules A is powered by a supermassive black hole located at its centre, which feeds on the surrounding gas and channels some of this gas into extremely fast jets. Our new high-resolutions observations taken with LOFAR have revealed that this jet grows stronger and weaker every few hundred thousand years. This variability produces the beautiful structures seen in the giant lobes, each of which is about as large as the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: R. Timmerman; LOFAR & Hubble Space Telescope

A decade-long challenge

Even before LOFAR started operations in 2012, the European team of astronomers began working to address the colossal challenge of combining the signals from more than 70,000 antennae located as much as 2,000 km apart. The result, a publicly-available data-processing pipeline, which is described in detail in one the scientific papers, will allow astronomers from around the world to use LOFAR to make high-resolution images with relative ease.

Dr Leah Morabito of Durham University, said: “Our aim is that this allows the scientific community to use the whole European network of LOFAR telescopes for their own science, without having to spend years to become an expert.”

Super images require supercomputers

The relative ease of the experience for the end user belies the complexity of the computational challenge that makes each image possible. Because LOFAR doesn’t just ‘take pictures’ of the night sky, it must stitch together the data gathered by more than 70,000 antennae, which is a huge computational task. To produce a single image, more than 13 terabits of raw data per second – the equivalent of more than a three hundred DVDs – must be digitised, transported to a central processor and then combined.

Frits Sweijen of Leiden University, said: “To process such immense data volumes we have to use supercomputers. These allow us to transform the terabytes of information from these antennas into just a few gigabytes of science-ready data, in only a couple of days.”

Media

All images and video's belonging to this press release can be found in high resolution here.

Links to Arxiv (free) papers can be found here.

About LOFAR

The International LOFAR Telescope is a trans-European network of radio antennas, with a core located in Exloo in the Netherlands. LOFAR works by combining the signals from more than 70,000 individual antenna dipoles, located in ‘antenna stations’ across the Netherlands and in partner European countries. The stations are connected by a high-speed fibre optic network, with powerful computers used to process the radio signals in order to simulate a trans-European radio antenna that stretches over 1,300 kilometres. The International LOFAR Telescope is unique, given its sensitivity, wide field-of-view, and image resolution or clarity. The LOFAR data archive is the largest astronomical data collection in the world.

LOFAR was designed, built and is presently operated by ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK are all partner countries in the International LOFAR Telescope.

Source: ASTRON/News

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Hubble Views a Galaxy in a ‘Furnace’

NGC 1385
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

 

This jewel-bright image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1385, a spiral galaxy 68 million light-years from Earth, which lies in the constellation Fornax. The image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which is often referred to as Hubble’s workhorse camera thanks to its reliability and versatility. It was installed in 2009 when astronauts last visited Hubble, and 12 years later it remains remarkably productive. 

NGC 1385’s home – the Fornax constellation – is not named after an animal or an ancient god, as are many of the other constellations. Fornax is simply the Latin word for a furnace. The constellation was named Fornax by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, a French astronomer born in 1713. Lacaille named 14 of the 88 constellations we still recognize today. He seems to have had a penchant for naming constellations after scientific instruments, including Atlia (the air pump), Norma (the ruler, or set square), and Telescopium (the telescope).

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

 

Source:  NASA/Solar System and Beyond

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Cold Horseshoes in Fast

Composite image of the active galaxy NGC 1275, which lies at the center of the Perseus cluster. Credits: [X-ray: NASA/CXC/IoA/A.Fabian et al.; Radio: NRAO/VLA/G. Taylor; Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA) & Univ. of Cambridge/IoA/A. Fabian

In this annotated image of NGC 1275, outlines and insets identify two filamentary structures: the blue loop (dotted outline and bottom left inset) and the horseshoe filament (dashed outline and top right inset). These two strikingly shaped filaments may both have been created during the same outburst. Annotations: Yu Qiu

The dynamic environments around active galaxies often exhibit delicate filaments of cold gas. In a new study, scientists have explored how these fragile structures are able to form and survive within their hot, fast-moving surroundings.

Curious Structures

The Perseus cluster, located more than 200 million light-years away, is a collection of thousands of galaxies embedded in a cloud of hot gas. At the cluster’s heart lies NGC 1275, an active galaxy that’s rapidly forming stars and contains an accreting supermassive black hole — two factors that result in outbursts of hot, fast outflows that are spewed into the intracluster medium.

In the midst of all this action, there’s a conundrum: we also see cold, outflowing gas that forms slender, elongated filamentary structures extending tens of thousands of light-years. Where does this cold gas come from, and how is it not heated or destroyed by the fast, hot outflows of the active galaxy?

Sweeping Up Old or Forming New?

Two explanations have been proposed for these cold outflows:

1. The hot winds flowing from the active galaxy sweep up existing cold gas and carry it along, drawing it out into filaments. This idea has a challenge: long before the cold gas manages to reach the speeds we observe — more than 100 km/s! — it would likely be destroyed by shocks, preventing the formation of filaments

2. The cold gas forms within the hot outflows as these winds slow, cool, and fragment into filaments. This idea shows promise! In a new study, a team of scientists led by Yu Qiu (邱宇; Peking University, China) has explored this possibility further using a set of detailed simulations of an outbursting active galaxy

The shape and speed of cold gas that forms within the outflows in two of the authors’ simulations (top and bottom) at three different times (left, middle, and right). The two simulations, which had different starting conditions, produce very different shapes of filaments: the top is long and threadlike, whereas the bottom is a perpendicular ring structure. Credits: Qiu et al. 2021, Hi-res image

Threads, Loops, and Horseshoes

Qiu and collaborators’ 3D hydrodynamic simulations model a hot, radial outflow erupting from the center of a cluster similar to Perseus. From these simulations, the authors show how gravity and pressure from the surroundings cause the hot outflow to slow and cool. They confirm that this process eventually leads to fragmentation, forming filaments of cold gas that move at high speeds consistent with what we observe.

One especially interesting result of the authors’ work: the shapes of the resulting filaments depend strongly on the starting conditions of the outflow. This could explain some particularly striking shapes that we observe in Perseus — there are not only radial threads, but also a loop and a horseshoe at opposite sides of the central galaxy.

The authors show that a bipolar outburst with specific physical conditions can create two perpendicular rings of cold gas instead of long filaments — which could easily reproduce the loop and horseshoe we see in Perseus.

Qiu and collaborators demonstrate how we can use the morphology and locations of the filaments to probe the history of the active galaxy’s outbursts, inferring their energetics and properties. Further study of these delicate threads, loops, and horseshoes is sure to provide a wealth of new information about distant, active galaxies and clusters.

Citation

“Dynamics and Morphology of Cold Gas in Fast, Radiatively Cooling Outflows: Constraining AGN Energetics with Horseshoes,” Yu Qiu et al 2021 ApJL 917 L7. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac16d9

Source:  American Astronomical Society (AAS/Nova)

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Mapping the Universe's Earliest Structures with COSMOS-Webb

This sea of galaxies is the complete, original COSMOS field from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The full mosaic is a composite of 575 separate ACS images, where each ACS image is about one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon. The jagged edges of the outline are due to the separate images that make up the survey field. Credits: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Nick Scoville (Caltech). Full Res Image

The COSMOS-Webb survey will map 0.6 square degrees of the sky—about the area of three full Moons—using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, while simultaneously mapping a smaller 0.2 square degrees with the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The jagged edges of the Hubble field’s outline are due to the separate images that make up the survey field. Credits: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Jeyhan Kartaltepe (RIT), Caitlin Casey (UT), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI). Full Res Image

When NASA's James Webb Space Telescope begins science operations in 2022, one of its first tasks will be an ambitious program to map the earliest structures in the universe. Called COSMOS-Webb, this wide and deep survey of half-a-million galaxies is the largest project Webb will undertake during its first year.

With more than 200 hours of observing time, COSMOS-Webb will survey a large patch of the sky—0.6 square degrees—with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam ). That's the size of three full moons. It will simultaneously map a smaller area with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

"It's a large chunk of sky, which is pretty unique to the COSMOS-Webb program. Most Webb programs are drilling very deep, like pencil-beam surveys that are studying tiny patches of sky," explained Caitlin Casey, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-leader of the COSMOS-Webb program. "Because we're covering such a large area, we can look at large-scale structures at the dawn of galaxy formation. We will also look for some of the rarest galaxies that existed early on, as well as map the large-scale dark matter distribution of galaxies out to very early times."

(Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so it cannot be seen directly. We know that dark matter exists because of the effect it has on objects that we can observe.)

COSMOS-Webb will study half-a-million galaxies with multi-band, high-resolution, near-infrared imaging , and an unprecedented 32,000 galaxies in the mid-infrared . With its rapid public release of the data, this survey will be a primary legacy dataset from Webb for scientists worldwide studying galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

Building on Hubble's Achievements

The COSMOS survey began in 2002 as a Hubble program to image a much larger patch of sky, about the area of 10 full moons. From there, the collaboration snowballed to include most of the world's major telescopes on Earth and in space. Now COSMOS is a multi-wavelength survey that covers the entire spectrum from the X-ray through the radio.

Because of its location on the sky, the COSMOS field is accessible to observatories around the world. Located on the celestial equator , it can be studied from both the northern and southern hemispheres, resulting in a rich and diverse treasury of data.

"COSMOS has become the survey that a lot of extragalactic scientists go to in order to conduct their analyses because the data products are so widely available, and because it covers such a wide area of the sky," said Rochester Institute of Technology's Jeyhan Kartaltepe, assistant professor of physics and co-leader of the COSMOS-Webb program. "COSMOS-Webb is the next installment of that, where we're using Webb to extend our coverage in the near- and mid-infrared part of the spectrum, and therefore pushing out our horizon, how far away we're able to see."

The ambitious COSMOS-Webb program will build upon previous discoveries to make advances in three particular areas of study, including: revolutionizing our understanding of the Reionization Era; looking for early, fully evolved galaxies; and learning how dark matter evolved with galaxies' stellar content.

Goal 1: Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Reionization Era

Soon after the big bang, the universe was completely dark. Stars and galaxies, which bathe the cosmos in light, had not yet formed. Instead, the universe consisted of a primordial soup of neutral hydrogen and helium atoms and invisible dark matter. This is called the cosmic dark ages.

After several hundred million years, the first stars and galaxies emerged and provided energy to reionize the early universe. This energy ripped apart the hydrogen atoms that filled the universe, giving them an electric charge and ending the cosmic dark ages. This new era where the universe was flooded with light is called the Reionization Era.

The first goal of COSMOS-Webb focuses on this epoch of reionization, which took place from 400,000 to 1 billion years after the big bang. Reionization likely happened in little pockets, not all at once. COSMOS-Webb will look for bubbles showing where the first pockets of the early universe were reionized. The team aims to map the scale of these reionization bubbles.

"Hubble has done a great job of finding handfuls of these galaxies out to early times, but we need thousands more galaxies to understand the reionization process," explained Casey.

Scientists don't even know what kind of galaxies ushered in the Reionization Era, whether they're very massive or relatively low-mass systems. COSMOS-Webb will have a unique ability to find very massive, rare galaxies and see what their distribution is like in large-scale structures. So, are the galaxies responsible for reionization living in the equivalent of a cosmic metropolis, or are they mostly evenly distributed across space? Only a survey the size of COSMOS-Webb can help scientists to answer this.

Goal 2: Looking for Early, Fully Evolved Galaxies

COSMOS-Webb will search for very early, fully evolved galaxies that shut down star birth in the first 2 billion years after the big bang. Hubble has found a handful of these galaxies, which challenge existing models about how the universe formed. Scientists struggle to explain how these galaxies could have old stars and not be forming any new stars so early in the history of the universe.

With a large survey like COSMOS-Webb, the team will find many of these rare galaxies. They plan detailed studies of these galaxies to understand how they could have evolved so rapidly and turned off star formation so early.

Goal 3: Learning How Dark Matter Evolved with Galaxies' Stellar Content

COSMOS-Webb will give scientists insight into how dark matter in galaxies has evolved with the galaxies' stellar content over the universe's lifetime.

Galaxies are made of two types of matter: normal, luminous matter that we see in stars and other objects, and invisible dark matter, which is often more massive than the galaxy and can surround it in an extended halo. Those two kinds of matter are intertwined in galaxy formation and evolution. However, presently there's not much knowledge about how the dark matter mass in the halos of galaxies formed, and how that dark matter impacts the formation of the galaxies.

COSMOS-Webb will shed light on this process by allowing scientists to directly measure these dark matter halos through "weak lensing." The gravity from any type of mass—whether it's dark or luminous—can serve as a lens to "bend" the light we see from more distant galaxies. Weak lensing distorts the apparent shape of background galaxies, so when a halo is located in front of other galaxies, scientists can directly measure the mass of the halo's dark matter.

"For the first time, we'll be able to measure the relationship between the dark matter mass and the luminous mass of galaxies back to the first 2 billion years of cosmic time," said team member Anton Koekemoer, a research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped design the program's observing strategy and is in charge of constructing all the images from the program. "That's a crucial epoch for us to try to understand how the galaxies' mass was first put in place, and how that's driven by the dark matter halos. And that can then feed indirectly into our understanding of galaxy formation."

Quickly Sharing Data with the Community

COSMOS-Webb is a Treasury program, which by definition is designed to create datasets of lasting scientific value. Treasury Programs strive to solve multiple scientific problems with a single, coherent dataset. Data taken under a Treasury Program usually has no exclusive access period, enabling immediate analysis by other researchers.

"As a Treasury Program, you are committing to quickly releasing your data and your data products to the community," explained Kartaltepe. "We're going to produce this community resource and make it publicly available so that the rest of the community can use it in their scientific analyses."

Koekemoer added, "A Treasury Program commits to making publicly available all these science products so that anyone in the community, even at very small institutions, can have the same, equal access to the data products and then just do the science."

COSMOS-Webb is a Cycle 1 General Observers program. General Observers programs were competitively selected using a dual-anonymous review system, the same system that is used to allocate time on Hubble.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Media Contact:

Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
 

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

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Related Links and Documents:

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Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

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