Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Webb Telescope Studies Moon-Forming Disk Around Massive Planet

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NASA's Webb Telescope Studies Moon-Forming Disk Around Massive Planet

Release date: Monday, September 29, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

The disk offers insight into how the moons of solar system gas giants like Jupiter might have formed.

Our solar system contains eight major planets, and more than 400 known moons orbiting six of these planets. Where did they all come from? There are multiple formation mechanisms. The case for large moons, like the four Galilean satellites around Jupiter, is that they condensed out of a dust and gas disk encircling the planet when it formed. But that would have happened over 4 billion years ago, and there is scant forensic evidence today.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has provided the first direct view of material in a disk around a large exoplanet, which is located over 625 light-years away. This disk is a possible construction yard for moons. Moons likely outnumber planets in our galaxy, and some might be habitats for life as we know it. So, understanding formation scenarios for moons is critical.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Webb Explores Largest Star-Forming Cloud in Milky Way

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NASA's Webb Explores Largest Star-Forming Cloud in Milky Way

Release date: Wednesday, September 24, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

The galactic center is packed with star-making material — why isn’t it producing more stars? Webb could reveal long-sought answers.

Sagittarius B2 is the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive and active star forming cloud, producing half of the stars created in the galactic center region despite having only 10 percent of the area’s star-making material. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals stunning new views of the region, using both its near-infrared and mid-infrared instruments, to capture both its colorful stars and gaseous stellar nurseries in unprecedented detail. Astronomers think that analysis of Webb’s data will help unravel enduring mysteries of the star formation process, and why Sagittarius B2 is forming so many more stars than the rest of the galactic center.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object

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NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object

Release date: Thursday, September 18, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Only Hubble with its unique ultraviolet vision could see this event

A celestial meal is taking place, and only the Hubble Space Telescope caught the feast in action. Just 260 light-years away — close in cosmic terms —  a burned-out star called a white dwarf is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. The Pluto analog came from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system. As the exo-Pluto wandered too close to the star, the white dwarf tore it apart and began snacking on it.

Thanks to its unique ultraviolet vision, only Hubble could identify this event. Scientists using Hubble analyzed the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. They were surprised to find water and other icy content indicating that the object came from far out in the system’s Kuiper Belt analog. Without Hubble’s ultraviolet capability, this material — unseen in visible light — would not have been detected.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way

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NASA’s Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way

Release date: Wednesday, September 10, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Young Star Behaves Like a Giant Roman Candle

Way out toward the edge of our Milky Way galaxy, a young star that is still forming is sending out a birth announcement to the universe in the form of a celebratory looking firework. It's not your July 4th type. These seething twin jets of hot gasses are blazing across 8 light-years – twice the distance between our Sun and the nearest star system. Superheated gases falling onto the massive star are blasted back into space along the star’s rotational axis. Powerful magnetic fields confine the jets to narrow beams, like a Star Wars lightsaber. The James Webb Space Telescope witnessed the spectacle in infrared light. The jet is plowing into interstellar dust and gas, creating fascinating details captured only by Webb.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA Webb Looks at Earth-Sized, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e

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NASA Webb Looks at Earth-Sized, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e

Release date: Monday, September 8, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

While an original atmosphere is unlikely, scientists are narrowing possibilities for TRAPPIST-1 e’s secondary atmosphere, even as Webb observations of the exoplanet continue.

Exoplanet scientists are working their way through the TRAPPIST-1 system of seven Earth-sized worlds with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, demonstrating its unprecedented ability to capture detailed information about exoplanet atmospheres and learning to work with that data. The first results are now in from Webb’s observations of planet e, which orbits in its host star’s “Goldilocks zone” (also called a habitable zone), where it is neither too hot nor too cold but potentially just right for liquid water on the planet’s surface. That is, if there is also an atmosphere providing the pressure necessary for water to maintain a stable liquid state. While the initial four observations by Webb are not enough to confirm an atmosphere, scientists are using the data to narrow possibilities for the planet, including possibilities such as a global surface ocean or a methane-enriched environment similar to Saturn’s moon Titan. Meanwhile, additional, innovative Webb observations are underway that will eventually show which type of world TRAPPIST-1 e turns out to be. 

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Inbox Astronomy: Glittering Glimpse of Star Birth From NASA's Webb Telescope

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Glittering Glimpse of Star Birth From NASA's Webb Telescope

Release date: Thursday, September 4, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Nearby stellar nursery sheds light on massive star formation

This dramatic scene captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope looks like a fantastical tableau from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. But truth is even stranger than fiction. In reality, what appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being sculpted by the scorching radiation and punishing winds of massive newborn stars.

Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster is home to a vibrant stellar nursery. Super-hot, infant stars – some almost 8 times the temperature of the Sun – are carving a cavity into the wall of the star-forming nebula. Dramatic spires jut from the glowing wall of gas, resisting the relentless radiation and winds. They are like fingers pointing toward the hot, young stars that have sculpted them. The fierce forces shaping and compressing these spires cause new stars to form within them.

One of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Hubble Uncovers Rare White Dwarf Merger Remnant

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NASA's Hubble Uncovers Rare White Dwarf Merger Remnant

Release date: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 10:00:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Forensic evidence comes from dwarf’s unusual spectrum

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found forensic evidence, in unique ultraviolet spectral "fingerprints," that a red giant star is merging with a white dwarf companion star. The clue is that the dwarf — a burned-out cinder of a collapsed Sun-like star — has had its outer hydrogen and helium layers stripped down, exposing subsurface carbon. This showed up in the spectrum of the white dwarf. Also, the white dwarf is rare in that it is slightly more massive than our Sun, which is uncommon for dwarfs. Most dwarfs are a fraction our Sun’s mass. This doomed, more massive dwarf is hotter than most other white dwarfs.

Our Sun will run out of fuel and collapse down to a white dwarf in roughly 5 billion years. But there’s nothing lurking out there that will eat it.

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Inbox Astronomy: Webb Narrows Atmospheric Possibilities for Earth-sized Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 d

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Webb Narrows Atmospheric Possibilities for Earth-sized Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 d

Release date: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Could planets orbiting red dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 be habitable? Webb scientists say the investigation is ongoing.

A protective atmosphere, a friendly Sun, and lots of liquid water — Earth is a special place. Using the unprecedented capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are on a mission to determine just how special, and rare, our home planet is. Can this temperate environment exist elsewhere, even around a different type of star? 

The TRAPPIST-1 system provides a tantalizing opportunity to explore this question, as it contains seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy: a red dwarf. 

Webb has studied TRAPPIST-1 d, the “third rock” from the system’s red dwarf sun. Though the planet’s distance from its star puts it on the cusp of a potentially temperate zone, Webb’s initial data do not show an atmosphere. However, one may be present under certain conditions that haven’t yet been tested. Scientists say that this doesn’t mean that all hope is lost for the TRAPPIST-1 system either, with the potential for atmospheres and water remaining on the system’s outer planets.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA Roman Core Survey Will Trace Cosmic Expansion Over Time

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NASA Roman Core Survey Will Trace Cosmic Expansion Over Time

Release date: Tuesday, August 12, 2025 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will find exploding stars that act as signposts to measure the universe’s expansion and the influence of dark energy.

For thousands of years, humanity viewed the skies as unchanging, except for a few “wandering stars” (that we now know are planets). As we improved our ability to perceive the cosmos with light-gathering telescopes and electronic detectors, we realized that the universe is full of things that change in brightness, whether it be an exploding star or a matter-gulping black hole. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to deliver an avalanche of such transients, including thousands of “standard candle” supernovae that allow us to measure the expansion history of the universe.

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Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Webb Finds New Evidence for Planet Around Closest Solar Twin

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NASA's Webb Finds New Evidence for Planet Around Closest Solar Twin

Release date: Thursday, August 7, 2025 11:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Data shows planet could be a gas giant, orbiting 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.

The Alpha Centauri System, the closest star system to our own solar system, has made several appearances in science fiction and pop culture, mostly as a symbol for potential future interstellar travel or even as home to planets teeming with life. However, reality is a little different than what Hollywood has dreamed up.

This chaotic system contains two Sun-like stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and a faint red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, the only star of the system confirmed to host three confirmed planets.

New observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are now providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant planet surrounding Alpha Centauri A.

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