A Christmas present launched by the Ariane 5 rocket on December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope took up full function in June with already enough to satisfy astrophysicists. Just a few of the many unexpected discoveries.
A cluster of massive galaxies forming around an extremely red quasar located 11.5 billion light years away. A quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of an extremely luminous region. This result will expand our understanding of how clusters of galaxies in the early universe came together and formed the cosmic web we see today.
MIRI, the infrared telescope instrument developed at the LESIA Department of the Paris Observatory under the leadership and impetus of Daniel Rouan, who is the founding father of this new technology, delivers a new striking image of a pair of ‘stars. At least 17 concentric rings of dust ejected by this pair of stars located just over 5000 light-years from Earth from this duo known as Wolf-Rayet 140. Each ring was created when the two stars collided close together every 7.93 years like rings in the trunk of a tree.
Preliminary analysis of Mars’ spectrum shows a rich set of spectral features that contain information about dust, icy clouds, the type of rocks on the planet’s surface, and the composition of the atmosphere. Spectral signatures – including deep valleys known as absorption features – of water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are easily detected with the JWST.
The NIRSPEC spectrograph has made it possible to identify the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39 b The JWST, the first detection of this type in a planetary atmosphere outside our solar system. This does not necessarily mean proof of life on the surface of this planet because many phenomena, among other things, volcanic, can also release it.