Alfred T.’s Post

📷 This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows spiral galaxy NGC 5668. At first glance, it doesn’t seem remarkable: it's around 90 000 light-years across, similar in size and mass to our own Milky Way, and our face-on view shows open spiral arms.  🤔 But one difference is that NGC 5668 is forming new stars 60% more quickly than our galaxy, and this enhanced star formation rate comes with a corresponding abundance of supernova explosions. 🔗https://lnkd.in/ehPRyW34

Are we alone? This simply yet difficult question is one of the many puzzles space research seeks to answer. Numerous efforts have been made to discover alien life. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is one of such initiatives which utilizes radio telescopes to scan for signals that indicate technological activity from extraterrestrial civilizations. NASA’s Kepler, James Webb Space Telescope and other space missions complement in this probe for external signs of life. #spaceexploration #fortizotechnologies #alexdavidpratt

Is this a three body problem? Not quite, just a triple-star system! These stars are all T Tauri stars, they tend to be younger than 10 million years old, much younger than our 4.6 billion-year-old Sun. They’re often found still swaddled in the clouds of dust and gas from which they formed. This image was captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eQT2bfQK

In a groundbreaking effort, NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope has produced a 3D star map that highlights stars close to the sun with favorable conditions for hosting life. By identifying stars with mild X-ray environments, the map helps narrow down candidates for future in-depth studies for potentially habitable planets. These discoveries come as Chandra marks its 25th year in space, providing essential data to prioritize observations by upcoming cutting-edge telescopes. Could we be closer to finding another Earth?

"Star formation continues to maintain a sense of mystery because it is shrouded by curtains of dust and gas, creating an obstacle in observing this process. Fortunately, Webb’s ability to peer in the infrared is an asset in navigating these murky conditions. Additionally, these NIRCam images of the very center of the starburst were obtained using an instrument mode that prevented the very bright source from overwhelming the detector. While dark brown tendrils of heavy dust are threaded throughout M82’s glowing white core even in this infrared view, Webb’s NIRCam has revealed a level of detail that has historically been obscured. Looking closer toward the center, small specks depicted in green denote concentrated areas of iron, most of which are supernova remnants. Small patches that appear red signify regions where molecular hydrogen is being lit up by a nearby young star’s radiation... Looking at M82 in slightly longer infrared wavelengths, clumpy tendrils represented in red can be seen extending above and below the galaxy’s plane. These gaseous streamers are a galactic wind rushing out from the core of the starburst."

Webb Detects Most Distant Black Hole Merger to Date An international team of astronomers has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to find evidence for an ongoing merger of two galaxies and their massive black holes when the Universe was only 740 million years old. This marks the most distant detection of a black hole merger and the first time researchers have detected this phenomenon so early in the Universe. Read Here : https://lnkd.in/dd86xrwm

Stunning Depiction of Interacting Galaxies Celebrates Webb’s Second Anniversary! A captivating pair of interacting galaxies marks the second anniversary of scientific observations from NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s James Webb Space Telescope. Since the unveiling of its first image by President Biden and Vice President Harris two years ago, Webb has been continuously revealing the universe's secrets through detailed imagery and data. Webb is illuminating our understanding of the universe and inspiring future generations of scientists, astronomers, and explorers. Recently, the telescope captured a stunning image of these galaxies, known collectively as Arp 142, engaged in a slow cosmic dance. Their interaction began between 25 and 75 million years ago when the Penguin (NGC 2936) and the Egg (NGC 2937) made their first pass. They will continue to orbit each other, completing several additional passes before ultimately merging into a single galaxy hundreds of millions of years from now. #SpaceToday #NASA #JamesWebb #SpaceTelescope #InteractingGalaxies #CosmicDance #Astronomy #SpaceExploration #Universe #Galaxies #Astrophotography #CelestialWonders #DeepSpace #SpaceResearch #AstronomyLovers

Fermi's 12-year All-Sky Gamma-ray Map Image Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration; Text: Barb Mattson (U. Maryland, NASA's GSFC) Explanation: Forget X-ray vision — imagine what you could see with gamma-ray vision! The featured all-sky map shows what the universe looks like to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi sees light with energies about a billion times what the human eye can see, and the map combines 12 years of Fermi observations. The colors represent the brightness of the gamma-ray sources, with brighter sources appearing lighter in color. The prominent stripe across the middle is the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Most of the red and yellow dots scattered above and below the Milky Way’s plane are very distant galaxies, while most of those within the plane are nearby pulsars. The blue background that fills the image is the diffuse glow of gamma-rays from distant sources that are too dim to be detected individually. Some gamma-ray sources remain unidentified and topics of research — currently no one knows what they are. #PhoenixDelivers #nasa

For anyone interested in learning how scientists are identifying potentially habitable exoplanets using the James Webb space telescope, this is a really great post from NASA. It explains what transit and spectroscopy are and how they are used when attempting to identify characteristics of known exoplanets. It also discusses challenges specific to Webb and how combining it's observations with data from the upcoming Roman space telescope mission will lay the foundation for discovery with the future Habitable Worlds observatory. https://lnkd.in/e3GEHm9K