Jabar Space News🚀

The observatory has a packed schedule of science programs looking at all kinds of cosmic phenomena, like planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, and more. Webb will revolutionize our understanding of the universe — but first, researchers need time to analyze data and make sure that they understand what they’re seeing.  Webb has already captured more images beyond the ones you saw on July 12, and the Cartwheel Galaxy is just one example. Hold onto your intergalactic hats — we’ll be rolling those out in the coming weeks at nasa.gov/webb and on the NASAWebb social media channels. Some of those images give a first look at Webb’s capabilities, but are not part of science programs. In the meantime, you can revisit the first images at nasa.gov/webbfirstimages. We also have this page where you can find the full array of images and data at full resolution. News releases on results will be coming, too, once they have been reviewed. You may have seen scientists on social med...

On Wednesday, April 10th 2019,  the world was treated to something unprecedented - the first-ever image of a black hole! Specifically, the image captured the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at the center of M87 (aka. Virgo A), a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the Virgo constellation. Already, this image is being compared to pictures like the "pale blue dot" taken by the Voyager 1 mission or the "Earthrise" image taken by Apollo 8. Like these images, the picture of the M87 black hole has captured the imagination of people all around the world. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration produced the first-ever image of a black hole, which lies at the center of the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth. The image showed a bright ring with a dark center, which is the black hole's shadow. In capturing this image, astronomers noticed a significant amount of polarized light around the black hole. Now, the collaboration has revealed a new look at...

Following the completion of critical mirror alignment steps, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team expects that Webb’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve. On March 11, the Webb team completed the stage of alignment known as “fine phasing.” At this key stage in the commissioning of Webb’s Optical Telescope Element, every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations. The team also found no critical issues and no measurable contamination or blockages to Webb’s optical path. The observatory is able to successfully gather light from distant objects and deliver it to its instruments without issue. Although there are months to go before Webb ultimately delivers its new view of the cosmos, achieving this milestone means the team is confident that Webb’s first-of-its-kind optical system is working as well as possible. “More than 20 years ago, the Webb team set out t...

On Monday (Jan. 3), James Webb Space Telescope controllers began tightening the tension on its massive sunshield, a five-layer shield the size of a tennis court designed to keep the $10 billion observatory cool enough for science.  The task is the final step in unfolding Webb's sunshield, and should take up to three days to complete. With Webb being so new to space — the $10 billion observatory only launched on Dec. 25 — the tensioning was delayed by two days as engineers took a break for the New Year's Day holiday on Saturday (Jan. 1) and worked through couple of minor issues on Sunday. Engineers are now tensioning the first layer of the sunshield, which will continue through Monday if that goes to plan. Once complete, the Webb team will assess the deployment success and adapt the following four layers as required. The schedule calls for the deployment to finish on Wednesday (Jan. 5), but the timing of layer tensioning (and even...