Webb

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

James Webb has opened the door to a fascinating world

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Until not so long ago, the word “exoplanet” seemed more typical of speculation than astronomy. Isaac Newton already dropped in the ‘Scholium Generale‘ of the Principia Mathematica that fixed stars could be the center of systems similar to ours, but science needed centuries to prove it. It was not until the late 1980s that the first signs of planets outside the Solar Systemalthough we had to wait until 1992 to confirm for the first time the existence of worlds beyond the Sun, around the pulsar PSR B1257+12. In recent decades, the pace of discoveries has skyrocketed thanks to increasingly precise instruments, which have allowed us to locate worlds that are as strange as they are fascinating. The Kepler space telescopefor example, identified more than a decade ago Kepler-16ba planet with “two suns” reminiscent of Tatooine from Star Wars. Since then we have cataloged a huge variety of exoplanets, but now the James Webb telescope presents an especially striking find: a world of boiling lava that, to the surprise of astronomers, is colder than theoretical models predict. An extreme world that questions what we know With a radius approximately 1.4 times that of Earth, TOI-561b It is an extreme super-Earth that orbits a star located about 280 light years away, in the constellation Sextans. NASA describes it as the innermost planet of a system made up of four worlds, with an immediate peculiarity: it completes an orbit in less than eleven hours. Its proximity is so extreme, barely 0.01 astronomical units, that the daytime hemisphere must greatly exceed the melting point of rocks. Everything points to a planet trapped by its star in a tidal lock, with eternal day on one side and perpetual night on the other. One of the peculiarities that most puzzles researchers is the low density of TOI-561 b. Astronomer Johanna Teske, lead author of the study, explains that “it is not a super-puff, but it is less dense than one would expect with a composition similar to that of the Earth.” The team envisioned the planet having a small iron core and a mantle made up of less compact minerals, a possibility that would fit the chemistry of its star. As it is a very old G-type star, about 10 billion years old and poor in iron, located in the thick disk of the Milky Way, it is plausible that the planet emerged in a primordial environment different from that of the Solar System. Still, the exotic composition did not resolve all the unknowns, and the team began to consider another possibility: that TOI-561 b was involved through a thick atmosphere. The idea is striking because the models indicate that small planets subjected to such intense irradiation for billions of years should have lost their gases long ago. NASA reminds us, however, that some worlds of this type show signs that they are not simple bare rocks. That nuance opened the door to thinking that the low density could be due, in part, to a volume inflated by a substantial layer of gases. To test the idea of ​​a dense atmosphere, the team turned to a technique that James Webb has used on other rocky worlds: measuring the disappearance of some of the infrared glow as the planet passes behind its star. Using the NIRSpec spectrograph, the researchers estimated the temperature of the illuminated hemisphere and compared it to what would be expected for a surface without heat-distributing gases. If TOI-561 b were a bare rock, its temperature would be around 2,700 ºC. However, observations placed that value close to 1,800°C, a difference too large to ignore. The unexpectedly low temperature makes sense if TOI-561 b is enveloped by a dense, volatile-filled atmosphere. In that case, the winds would transport heat from the illuminated hemisphere to less hot areas, which would reduce the infrared emission received by the telescope. Gases capable of absorbing part of the radiation before it escapes into space also come into play, something that coincides with the models evaluated by the team. YoIt is even possible that silicate clouds exist that reflect the light of the star and contribute to cooling the upper layers of the atmosphere. To explain how TOI-561 b maintains such a resilient atmosphere, the researchers propose a mechanism in which magma and gases are in constant exchange. Tim Lichtenberg points out that as the interior releases volatile compounds into the atmosphere, the ocean of molten rock recaptures some of them, reducing the loss to space. This process requires a planet exceptionally rich in volatile substances, very different from Earth in its initial composition. In Lichtenberg’s words, it would be “like a ball of wet lava,” a description that well sums up the extreme nature of the find. The observations that have allowed us to reconstruct this scenario are part of James Webb’s General Observers 3860 program. For more than 37 hours, the telescope continuously tracked the system as TOI-561 b completed nearly four full orbits, a record that offers a rare glimpse of how its brightness varies along the way. With that volume of data, the team is now analyzing how the temperature changes around the planet and what clues it provides about the composition of its atmosphere. This set of data, still being analyzed, points to a more complex world than was intuited in the first observations. The case of TOI-561 b shows that even the most extreme worlds can hold surprises. Far from just a scorched rock, Webb’s observations describe a dynamic system in which magma, atmosphere, and stellar radiation interact in ways we don’t yet fully understand. As Johanna Teske points out, “What’s really exciting is that this new data set It’s opening even more questions than it’s answering.“The research continues, and each new analysis seems to confirm that this planet belongs to a category that we are only beginning to know. Artistic images | POT In Xataka | We already know when the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will be closest to Earth and what’s … Read more

The James Webb captures a lonely object of the size of Jupiter devouring like a miniature sun

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An international astronomer team has witnessed an extraordinary event: a lonely object, with a mass of just 5 to 10 times that of Jupiter, has entered a violent and prolonged growth burst. Using the combined power of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and him Vary Large Telescope (VLT) of the Southern European Observatory, scientists They have observed How this object, known as Cha J11070768-7626326, drastically increases its brightness and its “food” rhythm, behaving like a miniature star. The importance. This discovery represents the first time that a outbreak of accretion of type “exor”, a phenomenon so far associated with young stars, in a body of planetary mass. The finding is not only a milestone in astronomical observation, but also further blur the borders between what we consider a giant planet and a small star. The mystery. CH 1107-7626 is not a planet in the traditional sense that we all have in our mind. Although it has a mass comparable to that of a gaseous giant, I do not orbit any star and is 620 light years from the earth. Is what is known as an “free planetary mass object” or FFPMO (for its acronym in English). The existence of these lonely bodies raises a fundamental question for astronomy: are giant planets that were expelled from their solar systems, or are smaller stars that can exist in isolation? In order to solve this enigma that astronomers have right now on the table, you have to analyze the gas and dust disc that is around, as well as the way of accumulating the material. The fact that Cha 1107-7626 has an album and feeds on it suggests that its origin is more like that of a star. A cosmic feast. Astronomers observed Cha 1107-7626 in a state of calm in April and May 2025. However, for June, something had changed drastically. The object entered a “indulgence.” This means that its rhythm of ‘food’ began to increase, and in this way it reached a mass increase rate of 10-7 masses of Jupiter per year, the highest ever measured in a planetary mass object. As a result of this frenzy, the objective became between 1.5 and 2 brighter magnitudes in visible light and its optical flow increased between 3 and 6 times. This outbreak remained active for at least two months, since it was still on the end of the observation campaign in August 2026. But the most interesting thing is the speed it has. According to the observations made with the Vray Lark Telescope of the European Observatory, the growth rate is really aggressive, with a record rate of devouring 6,600 million tons per second of dust and gas. Great footprints. Beyond the increase in brightness, the telescopes captured detailed physical changes that reveal the nature of the event. A hydrogen emission line, known as Hα, developed a “double peak” profile with a red displaced absorption. According to the authors, this profile is a “distinctive brand” of the accretion channeled through magnetic fields, a process called “magnetospherical accretion” observed in young stars. But the most surprising finding was the change in the chemistry of the disc. At first, changes in the emission lines of the hydrocarbons molecules that came from the disc during the outbreak were seen. But water vapor also began to appear with a characteristic emission around 6.6 µm. This appeared during the outbreak where there was nothing before and is relevant because it is the first time that chemical changes of this type are observed caused by an increase in accretion. Relevance. This event classifies Cha 1107-7626 as the first “exor” of known planetary mass. Exor outbursts are significant accretion events that are considered key episodes in the early evolution of the stars. They can deeply affect the physical structure and chemical composition of the protoplanetary disk, potentially influencing the early stages of planet formation. Observing this process in such a small object demonstrates that the violent and fundamental mechanisms that the stars build also work at planetary scales. The study of Cha 1107-7626 offers an unprecedented vision of the accretion in the lower mass objects of the universe, providing a new window to understand how both smaller stars and the largest planets are formed. Images | Javier Miranda In Xataka | The most transformer of modern cosmology is just around the corner, according to the hypothesis of these physicists

With the James Webb we have seen the oldest black hole in the universe. But you just have more questions

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He James Webb Space Telescope has accustomed us to discoveries that break with our schemes mental The last discovery Where he has been the protagonist, he has undoubtedly re -rethink what we knew about the universe, by confirming the existence of the black hole more distant ever observed. Something that will allow answering some questions that astronomy still had. A colossus that has already been baptized. This black hole has received the name of Capers-lrd-Z9 And it is 13,300 million light years away, which means that we are seeing it as it was just 500 million years after big Bang. In this way, its existence, and especially the size it has, challenges everything we thought about how these giants grow. How this black hole was found. Finding something that is so far is not a simple task precisely. Astronomers used program data Capers (Candels-Aea Prism Epoch of Reion Survey) of the James Webb space telescope, specially designed for explore the confines of the universe. The leader of the research team, Anthony Taylor, Explain that “when looking for black holes, this is the farthest that can be reached in practice. We are really expanding the limits of what current technology can detect.” A discovery to confirm. The key to confirmation was spectroscopy, the technique that breaks down the light of an objective in its different wavelengths, such as a prism. For Identify an active black holescientists are looking for an unmistakable firm: gas that moves at extreme speeds. Turning the spiral towards the black hole, the light of the gas that moves away from us will tend towards a red wavelength, and that of the gas approaching is compressed towards the blue length. In this way, if these two trends are found, it is quite unmistakable that a black hole is ‘seeing’. In this way, the Nirspec Spectrograph The Webb detected a remarkably wide hydrogen emission line, the irrefutable test that a massive object was stirring the gas around it at speeds of up to 3,500 km/s. It belonged to something bigger. Initially, Capers-LRD-Z9 was just an intriguing motorcycle in webb images. However, it was belonging to a new and enigmatic class of objects called ‘Small red points’ (Little Red Dots or LRDS). These galaxiespresent only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe, they are extremely compact, bright and as its name indicates very red. His discovery was “a big surprise,” according to Steven Finkelstein, co -author of the study. “They didn’t look anything like galaxies seen with Hubble.” In this way, this finding has helped explain two of the great mysteries above the table. Why are they so bright? Its brightness would suggest an unlikely number of stars for such an early era of the universe. In this way, this study confirms the theory that light comes from a supermassive black hole that is active and literally devours the subject. Something that results in hot and shines with a huge intensity. Why are they so red? The model that best suits the observations of Capers-LRD-Z9 suggests that the black hole is wrapped in a dense and neutral gas environment. This gas cloud absorbs the blue light and lets the red pass, staining the entire galaxy. Something that could be confirmed when comparing this object with other similar sources of energy. An impossible giant. The most shocking of Capers-LRD-Z9 is the size of its black hole. It is estimated that it could have a mass of up to 300 million times that of our sun. To put it in perspective, it is so massive that it could represent more than 4.5% of the total mass of all the stars of its host galaxy, a proportion much greater than the 0.1% we see in the nearby galaxies. How could it grow so much and so fast? This is one of the big questions that anyone can ask, taking into account that this black hole appeared at a very early stage of the universe. Something that questions the current models that we have on the table. Finkelstein summarizes it as follows: “This adds to the growing evidence that primitive black holes grew much faster than we thought were possible. Or they began being much more massive than our models predict.” Two models to explain its existence. The first of these is that the black hole was not born from a star, but from the direct collapse of a cloud of primary gas, starting its life with a mass of thousands of soles and growing at a normal pace. The second theory that scientists have on the table is that it was actually born from one of the first massive stars (with a mass 100 times higher than the sun) that existed. The question here is that he would have grown at a rhythm ‘Super-Edington‘, devouring matter much faster than the stable theoretical limit is considered. There is still much to find out. The team expects to obtain more observations with the Webb to unravel the secrets of this single object. “We had not been able to study the early evolution of black holes until recently,” concludes Taylor, “and we are excited to see what we can learn.” Images | Nasa Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | Two astronomers studied the “sound of the Big Bang” and reached a disturbing conclusion: the earth is in a lonely bubble

The James Webb has just photographed one of the great mysteries of the universe’s galaxies: how they intertwine

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How many galaxies fit in an image? In the instruments of the James Webb space telescope (JWST), at least, many: hundreds. And even thousands. From close to the distant. The image taken by the JWST (with the help of the veteran hubble) and published by the European Space Agency (ESA) It shows us objects in a wide range of distances: from stars located within our own galaxy (easy to distinguish thanks to The characteristics six points of diffraction of this telescope) to distant galaxies in space and in time. The “star” of the image. However, according to Explain the agency itselfthe main protagonist of this capture is none other than a cluster of galaxies that we can see below the center of the image, a distant group of galaxies that shines in a mixture tone of white and gold. This group emerged about 6.5 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe as and as we know it was somewhat less than the age it is now. The importance of this group lies in the fact that more than half of the galaxies we know can be found in similar groups, so studying it can help us understand more about how these groups that make up the greatest structures linked through the force of gravity are formed, says ESA. Cosmos-Web. The outstanding group is the largest galactic cluster in the region called Cosmos-Web Field. COSMOS (Cosmic Evolution Survey) It is a survey that uses telescopes such as webb, hubble or the XMM-Newton Space Observatory of ESA to explore the spaces and space phenomena that occurred in that celestial region. He Cosmos-Web program It seeks to take advantage of the high abilities of the JWST and instruments such as the Nircam filters on board to explore and map an area of ​​0.54 square degrees of the celestial vault, a little more than twice and a half times the area that occupies the full moon in our sky. This power of the instruments of the orbital telescope should allow us to understand how galactic clusters formed, taking us at a time when the universe was only 1.9 billion years old, 14% of their current age. This is intended to meet three objectives: identify galaxies at the time of reion (when the first stars were “caught”; probe the formation of the most massive galaxies; and understand the relationship between the mass of the stars in a galaxy and The galactic halo that “wraps.” “Galaxies feast ”. In its publication, ESA has given some additional details about the image we see. They explain, this combines nircam images (Near-Infrared Camera) with Hubble observations to present ourselves “a visual feast of galaxies.” In capture They can be seen galaxies of different types and even pairs of galaxies in the process of merging. The European Agency He also explains The interpretation of the colors of the galaxies: the galaxies that tend to the bluish tones are those in which young stars predominate, while the most old are older; either because of the color of the stars inside, either because they are further in space and therefore in time. The latter is the effect of the phenomenon called Redshift or red shift. Galactic evolution. Images like this have to tell us about the evolution of the universe and, above all, of galaxies like ours. The gravitational interaction between galaxies (more or less) close affects what happens within the same galaxies, such is the mass that these groups accumulate. And not only that: collisions and mergers between galaxies in the same group also condition what happens in these. An example can find it when the nearby step of two galaxies of different size allows a huge clouds of matter “start”, or it can Cause a “burst” that quickly consumes the gas of this. In Xataka | The James Webb has found a galaxy when the universe was 330 million years old. Hide an entire enigma Image | Es es/Webb, Nasa & Csa, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and The Cosmos-Web Team

The largest map of the universe is now available thanks to James Webb. And it can be explored as if it were Google Maps

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Astronomers They were convinced that the primitive universe was a dark place. That the galaxies took to appear after the Big Bang. But the new largest and most deep map of the universe, which extends until 13.5 billion years ago thanks to the observations of the James Webb space telescope, has just dynamited this idea. You can explore it yourself. Is called Cosmos-Weband it is not just a mosaic of images. It is a detailed catalog of almost 800,000 galaxies that covers 98% of the entire history of the universe in a specific region of heaven, thanks to the extraordinary sensitivity of the Webb Observatory. This gigantic panoramic is the result of More than 255 hours of observations of the NASA space telescope, ESA and the CSA, pointing to a region with very few stars or clouds of gas that block their vision towards the confines of the cosmos. The result is the largest contiguous image captured by the Webb to date, with more than 10,000 individual exhibitions. Comparisons are hateful. One way to understand the scale of this map is comparing it to the famous “Ultra -Profundo del Hubble”, the most detailed image of the universe in visible light. If we had a printed copy of the hubble ultraprophound field on a sheet of paper, Cosmos-Web would be a mural of almost 4 by 4 meters with the same depth. The Webb telescope observes wavelengths other than those of the Hubble, those of the nearby infrared and the middle infrared, but its instruments are so sensitive that you can see those 800,000 galaxies over 13.5 billion years in a region equivalent to three moons full in the night sky. Too much light, too soon. The great surprise of these images is not their depth, something for which the webb was designedbut what they reveal from the primitive universe. Astronomers believed that there would barely galaxies in the first 500 million years of the universe were incredibly rare, but there are approximately 10 times more galaxies than expected. “Since the James Webb space telescope went on, we have been wondering if your data They break the cosmological model“, admits Caitlin Casey, leader of the Cosmos-Web project.” The primitive universe only had about 400 million years to form one billion solar masses in stars. We just don’t know how it could happen. “ The role of Spain and open science. This monumental effort would not have been possible without a globa collaboration. And this is where Spain plays a role from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), which applied neural networks for the morphological classification of more than half a million catalog galaxies, an essential task to understand its evolution. But Cosmos-Web would not have been possible without the work of volunteers who, from their homes, helped for two years to process the raw data and correct artifacts of the Webb Telescope. Similarly, now anyone can explore the map and make their own discoveries. Cosmos-Web will continue to expand with new spectroscopic observations to analyze the internal chemistry of the most interesting galaxies. The main objectives are the “era of reion” (when the light of the first stars cleared the cosmic fog), the evolution of mass galaxies and how dark matter is related to visible matter. Image | Cosmos-Web In Xataka | The Webb Space Telescope observed some small red points almost as old as the Big Bang. They should not exist

Webb and Hubble telescopes watched Jupiter’s auroras at the same time. For some reason, they did not see the same

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The Great red spot, Polar cyclones, Cloud bands. Jupiter is known for its colossal dimensions and eternal storms. But their auroras are not far behind, and only now We are seeing them in detail Thanks to the power of the James Webb space telescope. A Christmas gift. Newly published with a study of Nature Communicationsthe images were captured on December 25, 2023 with the Nircam Chamber of the Webb Telescope. The most immediate conclusion is that the jovian auroras are of another level. Hundreds of times brighter and more energy than those of the Earth, not only feed, as on our planet, of the particles loaded with the solar wind, but also of the volcanic material expelled by the active moon ío. Hyperactive. The team that led the observations took a surprise when analyzing the data. They hoped to see slow and gradual changes in the auroras, but instead they found “the entire bullendo region and exploding of light”, a hyperactive show that “varied in a matter of seconds.” “What a Christmas gift was that, he left me hallucinated!” Confesses the researcher Jonathan Nichols of the University of Leicester, the United Kingdom. A mystery. To round the study, the team coordinated Webb’s observations in infrared with Simultaneous observations of the Hubble Space Telescope in the ultraviolet spectrum. And here was the puzzle: the brightest lights observed by the Webb in Jupiter’s atmosphere did not have a counterpart in the Hubble images. The webb focused on trihydrogen cation emissions (H3+), a molecule that shines intensely in infrared when high -energy electrons impact molecular hydrogen. But to produce the combination of brightness observed by both telescopes, a huge amount of very low energy particles would be needed by hitting Jupiter’s atmosphere, something that until now was considered practically impossible. What follows. The team plans to study this difference between webb and Hubble data, and explore its implications for Jupiter’s environment. Webb’s next observations will be compared with NASA Juno probe data to try to unravel the origin of the broadcast. The findings will be used to guide the Juice Mission of ESA, who travels now to Jupiter. Seven of their instruments, including their two cameras, will dedicate themselves to study the Jovian auroras when the probe reaches their destination. Its nearby measurements will help astronomers better understand the interaction between the magnetic field and the planet’s atmosphere, in addition to the moon ío. Images | NASA, ESA, CSA 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.

The James Webb has found a galaxy when the universe was 330 million years old. Hide an entire enigma

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The immense capacity of the James Webb space telescope (JWST) to see the confines of the observable universe also allows us to see how our universe was billions of years ago. Recall that, the finitude of the speed of light implies that what we see further in space is also further in time, which makes JWST a kind of time machine. JADES-GS-Z13-1. The James Webb has detected again the light emitted by a very distant and therefore ancient galaxy. The telescope has captured the appearance of Jades-GS-Z13-1 as was 330 million years after big Bang. So old and distant is that its observation implies a new enigma: the enormous density of the universe in that era should prevent its observation billions of years later. And light was made. The original universe was a dark place. If we go back enough, we will reach an era in which the universe was too dense for the light emanating from its particles to travel the space. The cosmos cooled as it expanded, so, when the photons had space to move around, there were no particles to issue them. The thing changed when hydrogen atoms began to join to form the first stars and galaxies when the universe I was a few million years old. In this long process it is called reionization, a byloys in which hydrogen clouds were reactivated and emitted new light. Even in this context, the universe was dense enough to part of the radiation of these first galaxies was overshadowed by a dense layer of neutral hydrogen. This is the case of Lyman-Alfa or Lyman-α. Redshift 13. The team studied the luminous spectrum of the galaxy to estimate its red shift or Redshift. The expansion of the universe means that, in the long run, the frequency of the light emitted by this galaxy is reduced, that is, the universe, when expanding stretches the electromagnetic waves as if it were a magnet. This causes the visible light to store towards the red tones and to the infrared after long trips. The level at which the light comes “stretched”, its value Redshiftallows us to estimate the distance at which the galaxy is found that the broadcast. The observations made from the JWST Nircam instrument allowed the team estimate value Redshift of 12.9 (either z= 12.9) For this galaxy, but to confirm this value, the team decided to study the complete spectrum through the Nirspec instrument (Near-Infrared Spectrgraph), also aboard the space telescope. It turned out that they were infrastiming their distance, which was closer to z= 13. Lyman-α. However, the spectrum study caused the team to detect something strange in this galaxy, at a specific point of the spectrum, the Lyman-α radiation lamade, a type of electomagnetic emission associated with hydrogen atoms. The broadcast captured by James Webb’s instruments was much more intense than it should according to current cosmological models. The details of the study have been published In an article In the magazine Nature. Two possible explanations. In his article, the team speculate with possible explanations To this anomaly. The first involves the possibility that the stars of the galaxy, which would have been some of the earliest in the universe, would have created a “ionized gas bubble” around the galaxy. This possibility would imply that the primal stars would have been “more massive, hotter and more luminous” than the stars formed in later stages of the universe. This possibility would give us new clues about the enigmatic population of stars known as Population III and that represents precisely these early stars of the universe. The second possibility implies the existence of a supermassive black hole in the center of an active galactic nucleus. In Xataka | These real images were unthinkable before the Webb Telescope: they are planets orbiting other stars to 130 light years Image | ESA/WEBB, NASA, STSCI, CSA, JADES COLLLABORATION, BRANT ROBERTSON (UC SANTA CRUZ), BEN JOHNSON (CFA), SANDRO TACCHELLA (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CFA), J. Witstok, P. Jakobsen, A. Pagan (STSCI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

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

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