BY MARC AIRHART
Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers racing to find some of the earliest galaxies ever glimpsed have now confirmed that a galaxy first detected last summer is in fact among the earliest ever found. The findings are in the journal Nature.
The Local Volume Mapper (LVM) Instrument has seen first science light. LVM is one of the three mappers that make up the fifth phase of the SDSS’s ambitious all-sky, multi-epoch spectroscopic survey. This new instrument will create a spectroscopic map of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies.
BY EMILY HOWARD
BY MARC AIRHART
Researchers have discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed about 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe.
BY MARC AIRHART
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)-led group of astronomers searched for an atmosphere on rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c. Though the planet is nearly identical in size and temperature to Venus, its atmosphere has turned out to be very different. By analysing the heat emitted from the planet, they conclude it may only have a tenuous atmosphere with minimal carbon dioxide.
BY EMILY HOWARD
AUSTIN, Texas. A team of astronomers has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to discover some of the longest tails of gas yet observed escaping a planet.
Texas sits under the X of two solar eclipse paths crisscrossing North America in the next year.
BY COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES STAFF WRITER
To gaze at the stars is human. To be able to see them in three-dimensional detail is very nearly divine.
Divine vision is what the James Webb Space Telescope has granted earthbound scientists in a new near-infrared, detailed image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a stellar remnant – the clouds of gas, dust and other material left behind when a star dies.
FORT DAVIS, Texas -- This week, McDonald Observatory and numerous partners join in celebrating the first anniversary of the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve.
