This year, the James Webb Space Telescope celebrated its first full year of operation, during which it returned a treasure trove of images. And it’s just getting started.
But JWST may end up having much more than a decade to study the cosmos. Thanks to a telescope-has-reached-its-new-home-at-last.html” title=”The James Webb Space Telescope has reached its new residence eventually”>perfect launch, the mission was left with far more fuel to point the telescope than expected, astrophysicist Jane Rigby of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in September at the First Year of JWST Science Conference in Baltimore. “Now we have more than 25 years of propellant.”
If the first 18 months of JWST science are any indication, the telescope could be ushering in a decades-long golden age for astronomy. Here’s just a few of the things JWST showed us in 2023.
The swirling Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a dusty delivery room packed with about 50 young stars comparable in size to our sun or smaller (SN: 2/18/08). These infants were born when gas and dust in the cloud condensed in quantities large enough for gravity to kick-start the fusion reactions that burn in the hearts of stars.
2023-12-12 07:00:00
Link from www.sciencenews.org