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25 jwst astronomy news items found

Astronomy in November 2025

This month offers a bit of everything: a once-in-a-lifetime interstellar visitor passing through, a brilliant supermoon lighting up the sky, two bright comets fading out after their October glory, planets dancing in interesting ways, and even a couple of meteor showers (plus the promise of the auroras glimmering for those far north). It&rsq...

Interstellar Comet 3I ATLAS observed by NASA as it approaches Mars

A rare celestial visitor from beyond the solar system is offering scientists a brief opportunity to study material that formed around another star. Known as Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, the object is only the third confirmed interstellar body to pass through our solar system. Discovered in July 2025, it is now being tracked by NASA’s fleet of space-based and groun...

New harmonic drive mount from MLAstro: The SAL-33

Astrophotography gear often comes from familiar big-name brands, so a new mount from a small solar-imaging company might raise some eyebrows. MLAstro, a Vietnam-based startup known for its cutting-edge spectroheliograph (narrowband solar imaging device), has taken a bold leap from capturing sunspots to tracking the entire night sky - I have one and it's am...

Gemini North telescope reveals Betelgeuse companion

Astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse using the NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ‘Alopeke instrument on Gemini North, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the NSF and operated by NSF NOIRLab. This discovery answers the longstanding mystery of the star’s varyin...

NASA team installs solar panels on roman space telescope observatory

Technicians at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently installed the solar panels onto the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This installation marked one of the final steps in assembling the observatory. Collectively called the Solar Array Sun Shield, the panels are designed to both power and shade the telescope, enabling its scientifi...

COSMOS-Web unveils deep universe map

The COSMOS-Web team has released the largest contiguous view of the deep universe ever captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), unveiling an unprecedented catalog of nearly 800,000 galaxies now available to the global scientific community. As the most expansive General Observer program of JWST’s Cycle 1, COSMOS-Web represents a monumental step forward in...

Student coders tackle NASA challenge

On March 28, 2025, 80 college students gathered at the Nancy Richardson Design Center at Colorado State University (CSU) to tackle a high-stakes challenge: create an intelligent system capable of navigating rugged terrain to assist in emergency situations. With just 24 hours to complete the task, participants were immersed in an intense, hands-on learning experience. ...

120 hours from JWST

The central focus of the latest James Webb Space Telescope "Picture of the Month," a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and CSA, is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063. Located approximately 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), this enormous collection of galaxies dominates the visual field. Upon closer examination, the de...

Do galaxies spin

On a clear night, under the sweep of the Milky Way, one might gaze at the faint blur of the Andromeda Galaxythrough a telescope. It appears as a misty spiral, majestic yet eerily still. This leads to a profound question: do galaxies truly spin and move, or are those swirling shapes merely static snapshots? Astronomers have long sought to determine whether...

Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with JWST free webinar

​On March 15, 2025, at 9:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP) will host a free webinar titled "Opening the Infrared Treasure Chest with JWST." The event features Dr. John C. Mather, a Nobel laureate in Physics (2006) and Senior Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Mather, who served as the...

Phoenix galaxy cluster mapped by Webb

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed how a massive galaxy cluster sustains high rates of star formation, resolving a long-standing mystery. This finding builds on more than a decade of studies conducted with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, along with several ground-based observatories. Image credi...

Removing mirror clips to eliminate diffraction

I recently came across in a video from Dakota Starry Nights. If you’re into astrophotography and use a Newtonian telescope, you might have noticed some odd diffraction spikes on your images, especially around bright stars. Those weird off-center spikes with dark gaps in between can make your images look a little off, and they can be particularly distracting when s...

JWST Astronomy stamps

The universe has always been a source of fascination and mystery, and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to unveil the wonders of space with its breathtaking images. In an exciting intersection of science and art, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has commemorated this monumental achievement with the release of two new stamps featuring images c...

Ring Nebula structure revealed

The Ring Nebula, one of the most photographed objects in the night sky since its first image was captured in 1886, has had its intrinsic structure debated for over a century. Now, a research team led by Professor Joel Kastner from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and School of Physics and Astronomy has obtained the ...

Young galaxy mystery from JWST

In a groundbreaking paper by Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Pune, India, a grand-design spiral galaxy was discovered using JWST - that shouldn't be there. This galaxy, with a photometric redshift of zphot = 4.03, is the highest redshift spiral galaxy identified with JWS...

Edwin Hubble won the Great Debate

I live in the Ozarks, just about 15 miles from Edwin Hubble's birthplace. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to fascinate me - both for the incredible views it has provided us and the profound questions it keeps raising about our universe. By the onset of the 20th century, the field of astronomy had not drastically evolved since Galileo's identificati...

SPHEREx mission set to create the most colorful cosmic map ever

NASA is preparing to launch the SPHEREx mission, a groundbreaking endeavor aimed at creating the most vibrant cosmic map ever produced. Scheduled for launch no later than April 2025, this space telescope will observe the universe in an unprecedented array of over 100 colors, capturing data from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies. This mission promises to offer n...

Inside view of a Dragon belly captured

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has captured a haunting image of SpaceX's Dragon capsule. The spacecraft, named Freedom, is currently undertaking SpaceX's Crew-9 mission for NASA. This striking photograph, taken from the vantage point of the orbiting laboratory, has garnered attention for its eerie and surreal depiction of the Dragon ca...

Brown dwarfs in Orion discovered by JWST

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has achieved a significant breakthrough with its recent discovery in the Orion Nebula. The telescope has identified brown dwarfs, often termed “failed stars,” nestled within planet-forming disks. This finding opens up new possibilities regarding the potential for planets to form around these celestial objects, which have...

Cloud Atlas of Mars showcases atmospheric phenomena

Cloud enthusiasts have a new tool to investigate striking formations in the skies above the Red Planet. A browsable database of 20-years-worth of images of clouds and storms, created by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Berlin, is helping scientists better understand how and where features arise in the martian atmosphere and what they can tell us about the climate of...

Galaxy 9422 spotted by NASA JWT could be a missing link

Looking deep into the early universe with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas outshining its stars. Found approximately one billion years after the big bang, galaxy GS-NDG-9422 (9422) may be a missing-link phase of galactic evolution between the uni...

Extremely Large Telescope updates

Jonathan Webb and Genelle Weule of ABC News Science recently embarked on an extraordinary journey to the heart of one of the most significant astronomical projects in the world - the construction of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Their visit, facilitated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), granted them an exclusive opportunity ...

Subaru Telescope inspires JWST Firecracker discovery

The stunning image of a “firecracker” at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy recently released by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), would not have happened without previous observations of the same area by the Subaru Telescope. The Subaru Telescope (left, Credit: NAOJ) and an artist’s conception for the James Webb Space Telescope (right, ...

Digel Cloud 2S examined by NASAs JWST

Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope pee...

Peering into Alien Skies: A virtual seminar with Dr. Caroline Morley

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been a beacon of discovery since its launch, and now, after two years of operation, its impact on our understanding of the universe, particularly in exoplanet science, is nothing short of revolutionary. We are at a pivotal moment where the characterization of worlds beyond our solar system is becoming increasingly detailed, than...