Telescope

the Webb telescope has just clarified a key doubt

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There are asteroids that go almost unnoticed and others that force us to look at them much more carefully. 2024 YR4 belongs to that second group. When it was discovered at the end of 2024, the first calculations of its trajectory still had enough margin of error to contemplate a very small possibility of impact with Earth. That scenario was soon ruled out, but, as ESA explainsthe case remained under follow-up for a different reason: a doubt was left open about the Moon which was not resolved until new observations arrived. Impact risk. With data available since spring 2025, trajectory models indicated that the asteroid had about a 4% chance of hitting the Moon on December 22, 2032, an estimate that NASA placed at 4.3% in its previous calculations. It was not a high percentage, but it was significant enough for the teams dedicated to monitoring near-Earth objects to follow it with special attention. Furthermore, we are talking about an object of about 60 meters. How Webb came into play. To clear up that doubt, something more than the usual telescopes was needed. An international team of astronomers identified two very specific windows in February 2026 in which the James Webb Space Telescope could try to detect the asteroid, which at that time was just an extremely faint point millions of kilometers away. It involved using one of the most complex scientific instruments built to date to locate an almost invisible object and measure its position with the necessary precision to project its orbit almost seven years into the future. Key piece. The observations were made on February 18 and 26, 2026 with the camera NIRCam of the James Webb telescope. From these images, astronomers compared the position of the asteroid with that of the background stars, whose coordinates are known with great precision thanks to ESA’s Gaia mission. ESA adds a relevant detail to understand why this went ahead: the planning and analysis was coordinated with ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies and the Webb mission team. With this new data package, the orbital models were adjusted enough to close the mystery. James Webb analyzed the position of the asteroid in relation to the background stars The flyby distance. With the new calculations, monitoring teams can now estimate quite accurately what the asteroid’s passage through the lunar environment will be like. According to NASA, it will pass on December 22, 2032 about 21,000 kilometers from the surface of the Moon. That range is enough to eliminate the impact scenario that had been on the table for months. In other words, the object will continue on its way through the solar system without hitting either the Moon or Earth. Surveillance doesn’t stop. Programs such as ESA’s Space Security or NASA’s tracking systems continue to detect and analyze near-Earth objects to anticipate any possible future threats. The logic is simple: the sooner a potentially dangerous object is identified, the more room there will be to study its trajectory and assess the real risk. In this case, the result has been reassuring, but it also illustrates, as ESA insists, what planetary defense means in practice when a doubt is resolved with more data and better measurements. Images | THAT In Xataka | We have been burning space junk for years to get rid of the problem. It turned out to be a bad idea

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, is building a huge space telescope. The question is not how, but why

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If someone today wanted to build something like a new Hubble, it would make sense to think of years of reports, reviews and committees before the first piece of hardware is even manufactured. However, that logic has just been broken with an unexpected announcement: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and his wife Wendy have put on the table his own money to power not one, but four telescopes, including a large-scale space observatory. The move not only challenges the sector’s inertia, but raises a question deeper than budget or technology: what exactly is a former Silicon Valley executive pursuing by wading into the heart of modern astronomy. This is a project promoted by the Schmidt Observatory System, it seeks to cover everything from the deep sky to the detailed study of transient phenomena. A change of model. Currently, telescopes are generally in the hands of public agencies and academic consortia. Building ever-larger mirrors and then putting instruments into orbit turned astronomy into a matter of national budgets. The Schmidts’ entry into this arena suggests that, with new technologies and another way to finance risk, that historic balance could be starting to shift again. Risk, speed and open science. The approach behind the observatory system is not to compete with space agencies, but to cover the space left by their own processes, which are long, conservative and highly conditioned by public budgets. The Schmidts seek to finance concepts that have already been imagined by the scientific community, but that rarely overcome the barrier of official financing due to their level of risk or the deadlines they require. The piece that gives meaning to the whole and that really makes the difference is Lazulithe only one of the four projects that will leave Earth. It aims to cover a wide range of science, from transient events lasting minutes or hours to the detailed study of exoplanets, with a level of flexibility that large public observatories cannot always offer. Further, more agile. One of the clearest breaks between Lazuli and Hubble is where it will operate and how. While NASA’s telescope orbits about 500 kilometers from Earth, Lazuli will be placed much further away, in an elliptical orbit that should give it a clearer view and allow for fast and continuous data linking. Lazuli Space Observatory In the official description, Schmidt Sciences frames this operation in a “lunar-resonant” orbit. Added to this is a larger mirror, 3.1 meters compared to Hubble’s 2.4 meters, and an observation philosophy designed to react quickly to unexpected phenomena. One platform, several instruments. Lazuli is designed as a unique platform that integrates three instruments designed to cover everything from wide-field observations to the detailed study of exoplanets and transient phenomena. Wide-field optical imager with high cadence for photometric time series, 30′×15′ field of view and filters between 300 and 1000 nm Integral field spectrograph continuously covering 400–1700 nm, optimized for stable spectrophotometry and rapid sorting High contrast coronagraph to directly observe exoplanets and circumstellar environments, with contrasts of 10⁻⁸ and up to 10⁻⁹ after processing The era of array telescopes. Argus, DSA and LFAST They are not traditional telescopes, but rather distributed systems that take advantage of recent advances in computing, storage, and automated analysis. Instead of concentrating everything in a single structure, they distribute the collection of light or radio signals among tens or thousands of modules that are then digitally synchronized. This modularity aims to accelerate deployments and opens the door to observing the sky almost in real time, something fundamental for the astronomy of fleeting events. Render of the Argus Array (left), Deep Synoptic Array (right) Argus Array will bring together 1,200 optical telescopes in Texas to observe the northern sky almost continuously, with the idea of ​​being able to “rewind” what happened minutes or hours before an event such as a supernova. DSA, in Nevada and under the direction of Caltech, will deploy 1,600 radio antennas to map more than a billion sources and update its view of the sky every fifteen minutes. LFAST, for its part, will be installed in Arizona as a system of 20 80-centimeter mirrors aimed at large-aperture spectroscopy and the search for biosignatures, with a prototype planned for mid-2026. What the Schmidts have launched is, at its core, an experiment on the scientific system itself. Lazuli and his three colleagues on land aim to show that it is possible to build large-scale observatories more quickly and with an openness of data that does not always fit into traditional models. Whether that vision materializes will depend on factors yet to be determined, such as the final contractors, real costs or the feasibility of the schedules, but if it goes well, the impact will not only be measured in new discoveries, but in a new way of deciding what science is done. Images | Village Global | Schmidt Observatory System In Xataka | China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

A planet has just disappeared. NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything

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Investigating the universe beyond the Solar System we know sometimes brings up more questions than answers. The search for exoplanets has left findings so different from what we know as fascinating. Thus, more than a decade ago the Kepler space telescope identified the Kepler-16ba planet with “two suns” along Star Wars Tatooine and the James Webb telescope stumbled upon a world of boiling lava that paradoxically it’s colder what the theory says. In the process of investigating the universe you can witness the disappearance of a planet, as NASA’s Hubble has monitored, to discover that there was nothing like a planet: they were in front of a violent cosmic phenomenon. First they detected a bright point of light and assumed that it was a planet covered in dust where the brightness of its star was reflected. Then the object disappeared and a different bright source appeared nearby. Finally, this international research team realized that they were not seeing planets at all: the light came from incandescent debris generated by violent collisions, as they later published in Science. A planetesimal collision that changes everything In their observations in time, they captured two different and very powerful impacts that generated large amounts of dust in the same planetary system, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand how planets are formed and what type of materials they are made of. Their main hypothesis: they have glimpsed not one, but two extremely rare events: one (two) planetesimal collisionthat is, a collision between small rocky objects similar to asteroids. Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang explains that it is the first time they have seen a planetesimal collision outside the solar system and that its study is “key to understanding how planets form and can also provide information about the structure of asteroids, something important for planetary defense programs such as the DART test.” Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author, insists on the exceptionality of the event: “It is not present in any of our previous Hubble images, which means that we have just witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge cloud of debris, something that has no parallel in our current solar system.” By NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) These collisions occurred in the planetary system surrounding the star Fomalhautwhich is larger than the Sun, is surrounded by an extensive and dense set of dusty debris belts and located about 25 light years from Earth, in the constellation Pisces Austrinus. That dust belt is so large that it is a real candy for research. Planet it seems, cloud of dust it is In 2008 they detected Fomalhaut b, a bright object of unknown nature that some researchers thought was a planet and others believed it was an expanding cloud of dust from a collision. Back in 2023, a new Hubble observation gave an unexpected twist to everything: the original light source was no longer there and another bright object had appeared in a slightly different area. As explains Wang, first They assumed it was Fomalhaut b, but they got a surprise: “We assumed the bright light was Fomalhaut b because it was the known source of the system. But by carefully comparing the new images with the old ones, we realized that it couldn’t be the same source. It was exciting, but also perplexing” So they had to change perspective and nomenclature: the original object was renamed Fomalhaut cs1 and its disappearance supports the idea that it was a cloud of dust that was slowly dispersing after a collision. They called the second bright source Fomalhaut cs2 and its behavior reinforces the conclusion that neither of the two objects was a planet: everything indicates that they are clouds of debris created when large planetesimals collide with each other. Investigating Fomalhaut cs2 they concluded that it looked very similar to the beginnings of cs1 from two decades ago, both in brightness and location. So the team already estimates the frequency of collisions in this guy in the system: every 100,000 years or even less. After all, in 20 years they have already seen two. Kalas explains that “if you took a movie of the last 3,000 years and sped it up so that each year lasted a fraction of a second, imagine how many flashes you would see. The Fomalhaut planetary system would be full of these crashes.” Fomalhaut cs1 no longer exists, but the research team wants to continue monitoring the system and has its eyes on cs2, which could hide more valuable information about how collisions develop in young planetary systems. Of course, in addition to the old Hubble, they will use the near-infrared camera of the James Webb Space Telescope since the NIRCam can capture detailed information about color, so they can determine the size and composition of dust grainsfor example if they contain water or ice. The confirmation of these collisions put a warning on the table for hunters of planets outside the Solar System: the gLarge clouds of dust can very well imitate the appearance of an exoplanetto by reflecting light from its star, which can lead to error using the reflected light detection system. Kalas sums it up: “What we learned from studying cs1 is that a large dust cloud can masquerade as a planet for many years.” As new observatories point to the sky to obtain direct images of Earth-like planets, differentiating between real planets and temporary dust clouds seems providential. In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons In Xataka | China reveals its cards for 2030: it will go in search of an “Earth 2.0” on its own Cover | Javier Miranda By ESA, NASA, and L. … Read more

The largest telescope in the northern hemisphere is looking for a home. And the Canary Islands have just taken the lead

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Spain is getting closer to having in its territory the most powerful telescope on the entire planet, the Teinta Meter Telescope (TMT). Its location may finally be the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, which for many years has been the emergency ‘plan B’, in case the original idea of ​​having it in the United States failed. And in the end, due to a large set of triggers, La Palma is gaining a lot of strength. A change of direction. He original use of the TMT was intended Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. But it is a plan that was paralyzed due to the rejection of the native communities, who consider this a sacred place. Although it is not only the ‘fault’ of the natives, but also of the cuts that the Trump administration has made intended for research and science in general. Given this situation, Spain has offered to host the project in La Palma as announced by the TMT International Observatory LLC on your website. In this case, he thanks the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for the offer made of commit to invest 400 million euros to install this telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory. The next steps are focused on developing together with the Ministry a “detailed roadmap towards the possible realization of the TMT at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory”, with the aim of this project moving forward at this location. The importance of La Palma. The Roque de los Muchachos Observatory already houses world-renowned facilities such as the Canary Islands Great Telescope (GTC), which is the largest optical and near-infrared telescope on the planet. In addition, it participates in new generation projects such as the Cherenkov telescopes, dedicated to observing high-energy gamma rays. And this is something that the Minister of Science herself, Diana Morant, wanted to remember, who through from your X account has celebrated this advance as the necessary step to turn “the Canarian sky into the main observatory in the northern hemisphere.” Why it is important. The TMT is not just any project: its construction involves some of the most influential scientific organizations on the planet, such as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) or the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which represents more than 40 academic entities from around the world. Beyond this, we are also talking about the TMT being one of the three reference telescopes globally along with the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile or the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) being developed in the Atacama Desert. Its 30-meter diameter mirror, made up of 492 hexagonal segments, will make it a key tool for exploring exoplanets, black holes, dark matter and the formation of the first galaxies, with a resolution ten times higher than that of Hubble. Political impact. Beyond the astronomical potential, hosting the TMT would mean a leap in scale for Spain in its presence in international research, reinforcing the role of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) as a strategic partner in global scientific projects and attracting talent and technological investment. Images | Alin Corneliu In Xataka | Which telescope to buy to enjoy the nights and stars: 20 telescopes, binoculars, gadgets, accessories and more

China is building the largest telescope in the world. The question is why he is doing it in secret

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In the select club of first level astronomical observatories, all projects They are advertised to hype and saucer decades in advance. China instead is building a gigantic telescope of 14 and a half meters on the Tibetan plateau without having officially announced it. US suspicions. An article of Wall Street Journal He has raised the hare. A telescope of that size would not only rival the most powerful observatories in the West, but, if it was terminated in time, it would temporarily become the largest terrestrial optical telescope in the world. The question that, according to the Journal, resonates in Harvard’s halls and NASA is not whether they are building it, but why they do it stealthily. The clues that arrive from China. Robert Kirshner, Emerrito Professor of Harvard and leader of the thirty -meter telescope, The American project that Spain now wantsit has been one of the main detectives in this plot. The clues, although discreet, are overwhelming: In January, the state company Nanjing Astronomical Instruments published on social networks that it had gained a tender of 22 million dollars to build the dome of a telescope with a mirror of 14.5 meters In April, some students who visited a scientific institute mentioned in another publication that the researchers had shown them the configuration of the mirrors for a telescope of that same size An outstanding Chinese astronomer declared state media that one of its objectives was to finish “the 14.5 meter telescope” before its retirement Beijing has adopted a low profile. The anomalous thing about this case is that Chinese institutions also do not celebrate their technological sovereignty with the usual triumphalism in this type of project. China, which does not hesitate to celebrate other space milestones, here has opted for a low profile. A clear trace of tenders. Technical documents are scattered, but paint a clear image of an advanced development project. The main test is the tender of its most visible component: the dome. A public announcement of the Chinese Academy of Sciences He was looking for offers for the “Project to Acquisition of the Dome of the Optical/Infrared Telescope of 14.5 m”, with a deadline set for November 2024. On the other hand, a memorandum of China National Astronomical Observatory It justifies the purchase of infrared detectors, describing the project as “a great astronomical telescope to achieve the top of science and technology.” In parallel, published job offers For “the general purpose of the general major caliber in construction in our country.” I even looked for personnel for the system engineering file managementan unequivocal sign that the design phase had given way to the construction. Why not announce it then? Matt Mountain, president of the Aura organization, which manages the Observatorios Hubble and James Webb for NASA, raises two hypotheses. The first is military: A telescope capable of obtaining crisp images of a galaxy to millions of light years can also observe with an unprecedented resolution The spy satellites of other nations in space. The domain of heaven is not only scientific, but also strategic, as We have been seeing in the Earth’s orbit For years. The second hypothesis is a long -term play for technological leadership. Mountain describes it brilliantly: “Astronomy is the entrance drug for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” Investing in inspiring projects such as a giant telescope is the best way to encourage a whole generation of young people to study Stem races, ensuring that China can overcome the United States in the coming decades. The biggest telescope for a while. To understand the magnitude of this project, you have to put it in context. The Hubble space telescope mirror measures 2.4 meters; The Webb, 6.5 meters. The four largest optical telescopes on Earth are around 10 meters in diameter. If China completes its 14.5 meter telescope soon, it would dwarf all existing observatories until the new generation They will see the light. Precisely these days the thirty -meter telescope (TMT) has been on everyone’s mouth (TMT) that the United States was going to build in Hawaii. After becoming one of the victims of Trump’s science cuts, the Government of Spain has offered 400 million euros To be built on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands. Although its final location is yet to be decided. Image | Universidad de Pekín In Xataka | For the first time we have pointed to heaven with a 3,200 megapixel camera. In just 10 hours he has done several years

An older comet that the sun has invaded the solar system. The old and reliable Hubble telescope already has photos

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The veteran space telescope Hubble, With 35 years of service behind themcontinues to demonstrate that it is in full form. His last feat has been to capture the first clear image of 3i/Atlas, an interstellar kite that not only comes from outside our solar system, but seems to be older than the sun itself. The interstellar object number three. 3i/Atlas is the third celestial body beyond the solar system that astronomers have detected on our neighborhood, after the mysterious Asteroid 1i/’Oumuamua In 2017 and the Gigantic Comet 2i/Borisov In 2019. The images, taken on July 21 by NASA’s space telescope, offer a detailed first view of the new member of the club. The first alert was given by an astrophysic student nicknamed Astrafoxen In his bluesky profile: “There are many cosmic rays around, but the comet’s comma looks fantastic and bulky.” And indeed, even without processing, the images let a diffuse and active atmosphere intuit around the code core. An unexpected composition. Scientists have already begun to reveal the secrets of the comet. A Preliminary study Based on previous images, he revealed that 3i/Atlas is an active interstellar kite that contains abundant water. However, its cloud of dust looks more like that of type D asteroids: rocks full of silicates with organic molecules, carbon and water ice inside. The composition of the comet’s comma seems to be adjusted 70% to Tagish Lake Meteoritewith the remaining 30% in water ice grains. An older cosmic fossil than the sun. Everything indicates that 3i/Atlas comes from a region of the Milky Way much older than ours. With an estimated age of 7,000 million years, compared to the 4.6 billion years of the solar system, this kite is a time capsule of an era before ours, which especially excites astronomers. First detected on July 1, 2025 by the Atlas poll, the comet has become the priority objective of observatories around the world. One of those who will join the hunt is the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which with The world’s largest digital camera promises to find many of these invaders. Images | Hubble (NASA), Gemini Observatory In Xataka | This is not normal photos of the cosmos: prepare your hard drive to save these hubble wonders

The most powerful telescope in Europe has seen something rare while observing two brown dwarfs: a perpendicular planet

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Today, in things that we did not know that there were in other star systems: a planet that orbits perpendicular to its two stars. It is as strange as it sounds. A different planet. We have seen everything in the exotic exoplanet gallery that the observable universe offers us, but a new surprise has forced astronomers to readjust their expectations. Using the Vary Large Telescope del Southern European Observatory (ESO) In Chile, astronomers have found the first exoplanet known in a polar orbit around a binary system of stars: two young brown dwarfs. Orbiting at 90 degrees. Baptized as 2m1510 (AB) B, this world has two Tatooine style soles, something extremely common when it comes to more massive stars, but not so much in the case of brown dwarfs. However, what is common is that orbits its two host stars in a way that until now had only theorized: turning perpendicular to them, in a polar orbit of 90 degrees. We sensed that they could exist. Astronomers had already detected planetary training discs in polar orbite and theory suggested that They could form stable planetsBut finding them was another story. 2M1510 (AB) B is the first credible test that this configuration exists. And the most curious thing is that the team was not actively looking for this type of planet, they found it while refining the orbital and physical parameters of the two brown dwarfs, seeing that the path of the two stars was being pushed and pull in unusual ways. It is not a usual system. The planet is not the only rare in this neighborhood, taking into account the host stars. Brown dwarfs are larger than giant giant planets, but too small to maintain nuclear fusion which characterizes the stars “really”. But the rarity does not end there. These brown dwarfs form an eclipsest binary, which means that from Earth we can see how they hide each other. 2M1510 (AB) is an incredibly infrequent system: the second pair of eclipsessing brown dwarfs known to date. With more than 5,800 exoplanets confirmed to date, only about 16 orbit around two stars. That one of them does precisely around a system as atypical as a binary of eclipsessing brown dwarfs, and with a polar orbit, it is a real cosmic jewel. Image | THAT In Xataka | These real images were unthinkable before the Webb Telescope: they are planets orbiting other stars to 130 light years

Webb telescope has been looking for extraterrestrial life for years. He just found the strongest signal so far in K2-18b

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The finding. An international team of scientists, headed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, has just made public sulfide detection or dimethyl disulfide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2 –18B, which has been observing the James Webb space telescope. On earth, these molecules are only produced by living organisms, mainly marine phytoplankton. It is the strongest evidence so far of a biofirma, a sign of possible extraterrestrial life, outside the solar system. To confirm it, they will take between 16 and 24 hours of observation with the Webb Telescope, according to the study published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters. What is K2-18b. It is what is called a “subneptune”, a planet of 8.6 times the dough and 2.6 times the radius of the earth that orbits a red dwarf in the habitable zone (receiving a flow of energy from its star similar to the earth). It is 124 light years from us, in Leo’s constellation. He is also a candidate for planet Hacéano, worlds that could house global oceans under hydrogen -rich atmospheres. Webb’s first observations have already detected methane and carbon dioxide, which fits with this scenario. Reasons for optimism. When the planet passes in front of its star, part of the stellar light crosses its atmosphere. Each molecule leaves a pattern in the spectrum that scientists associate with molecules. Scientists They have seen twice the same pattern since 2023 With the Miri instrument of the Webb. We are facing the first coherent biofirma on a planet outside the solar system. Life could be more common than we think of planets greater than Earth. The planets made us would enter our external life search radar, today focused on rock worlds such as superstierras. Reasons for caution. Although on earth dimethyl sulfur is biological, researchers admit that in a world under high pressure and with an atmosphere of hydrogen, it could be the result of exotic geochemical reactions. They will need laboratory experiments and models to check.

Almost 20 years ago a telescope captured a “cosmic tornado.” Now, thanks to James Webb, we know he hid a galaxy behind

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Appearances often deceive. A unbridled eye could well confuse one of the planets in our solar neighborhood, such as Venus, with a distant star. We could also see an image taken by a telescope and think that the two objects that most attract attention on it are part of the same cosmic phenomenon. This is precisely what happens in the last image of the James Webb space telescope (JWST). A cosmic tornado. While the new image seems to show a huge nebula filled by a star on the tip; What we really see It is the combination of the emanations expelled by a nascent star, called Herbig-Haro 49/50, and a galaxy located far behind in the plane. Herbig-Haro. The calls Herbig-Haro objects They are produced by the form of a star formation, specifically they are the result of the expulsion of matter during this process, matter that can accumulate in regions several light years away from the birthplace of the star. This matter “cools” emitting light both in the visible spectrum and infrared. Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) It is one of these objects. The appellation of “cosmic tornado” received it after the Spitzer space telescope observed it in 2006. The image did not allow to distinguish with certainty what type of object we saw at the tip of this cosmic tornado. A distant galaxy. The new image of James Webb allows us to see this luminous object with great definition, showing us the small details of a distant spiral galaxy. In its bluish center are the oldest stars. In its spirals of more reddish tones the galactic dust and areas of intense star formation would be concentrated. Comparison between the image of the Spitzer Space Telescope taken in 2006, and the last Inagen captured by the James Webb. NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, NASA-JPL, SSC Back to the foreground. But, let’s return to Herbig-Haro 49/50, the foreground of the image. The cloud of matter we see is within our galaxy, about 625 light years from our solar system. What we see are waves of bright hydrogen molecules, carbon dioxide and dust grains loaded with energy, red and orange tints in this false color photo. This formation is found in the Chamaeleon I cloudy complex, one of the regions with the formation activity of closer stars in our galaxy. Experts estimate that this “jet” of matter moves between 100 and 300 kilometers per second. And what about the star you are emanating? Astronomers believe that it is about cederblad 110 IRS4, a protoestrella Located at 1.5 light years From this cloud and visible in the image of the JWST, below right. Cederblad 110 IRS4 is a class I protoestrel, that is, it is in a rapid accumulation phase of matter. A combined image. The new image captured by the JWST is a combination of several snapshots taken by this telescope fruit of international collaboration. To create it Observations were combined of two of the instruments of James Webb, Nircam (Near-Infrared Camera), And Miri (MID-INFRAED INSTRUMENT). In Xataka | These real images were unthinkable before the Webb Telescope: they are planets orbiting other stars to 130 light years Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI

The Webb Telescope observed the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Has discovered a chaotic light show

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Three years ago we saw for the first time The Supermassive Black Hole that inhabits the center of our galaxy. Now the James Webb space telescope has opened a window to study its surroundings. And it has turned out to be a chaotic show of lights that never stops. Context. In the center of the Milky Way inhabits A gigantic black hole called Sagittarius a*. Astronomers have managed to unravel the extreme dynamics of their accretion disk, the spiral of gas and dust that turns around it. To do this, they observed it for 48 hours (distributed in several periods of 2023 and 2024) using the Nircam instrument of the Webb Telescope. A disco ball. The observations revealed that sgr a* emits A continuous game of lights and flashes which is characterized by constant blinking interspersed with a series of intense eruptions. These emissions have a weak and continuous component, probably originated in the internal turbulence of the disc, and a bright and short -term component, eruptions associated with magnetic reconnection, in which magnetic fields collide and release huge amounts of energy. Fluctuations can occur in seconds or as changes that extend for days, weeks and months. The explanation. The study of these variable emissions, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letterssuggests that fluctuations intensify at major scales. According to researchers, the small internal disturbances of the disk, associated with fluctuations in density and magnetic field, generate the faint flashes, while large eruptions are related to specific events of magnetic reconnection, comparable to the solar flares, but at levels much older energy. “In our data we observe a constantly changing luminosity,” Farhad Yusef-Zadeh explainsmain author of the study. “Suddenly, Boom! A great explosion of brightness appears suddenly and then calms down, without following a fixed pattern.” This nature, apparently random, demonstrates that the accretion disc is regenerated all the time, causing between five and six and six Great daily rashes, in addition to multiple intermittent outbreaks. The lags. An advantage of the NIRCAM instrument of the Webb Telescope is its ability to observe two infrared wavelengths simultaneously (2.1 and 4.8 micrometers). This allowed researchers to compare how the brightness of eruptions with each wavelength changed. Surprisingly, they discovered that the events observed in the shortest wavelength changed shine a little before the events of the longest. “It is the first time that we see a delay in the measurements of these wavelengths,” said Yusef-Zadeh. “We notice that the longest wavelength is delayed between three and 40 seconds.” This finding is a key clue that energy particles lose energy as they cool, a process known as syncrotron cooling. New observations. Researchers now plan to make a continuous observation of up to 24 hours from SGR A* using the Webb Telescope, which will help them determine if eruptions follow repetitive patterns or if they are truly random. Each flash and every flicker on the accretion disk of the supermassive hole offers us a deeper understanding of physics on the events horizon, one of the most extreme environments in the universe. In other words, it helps us discover how space-time and matter behave under the influence of overwhelming gravity. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, RALF CRAWFORD (STSCI) In Xataka | The Webb Telescope has managed to penetrate the nucleus of a neighboring galaxy, home to a furiously active black hole In Xataka | Telescopes from all over the world worked together in this image: the black hole of the Milky Way and its magnetic fields

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