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Exploring the Cosmos: The James Webb Space Telescope’s Groundbreaking Discoveries
Positioned in a halo-like orbit nearly one space/” title=”NASA mission achieves most distant demo of laser communications across space”>million miles from our planet, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is pushing the boundaries of human observation into the depths of space.
Unveiling Distant Galaxies
In May, astronomers made an exciting announcement regarding JWST’s capabilities. The telescope identified the most distant galaxy ever observed—a hazy red light that represents its existence just 290 million years post-Big Bang. This galaxy, with a mass several hundred million times greater than that of our Sun, emitted light that traveled over 13 billion years before reaching JWST’s gold-coated mirror.
Direct Imaging of Exoplanets
A few months later, in July, scientists shared an extraordinary image captured by JWST of an exoplanet orbiting a star slightly cooler than our Sun. Located nearly 12 light-years away from Earth, this alien planet boasts a mass several times greater than Jupiter and holds the title for being the closest exoplanet to be directly imaged. Utilizing one of its advanced instruments equipped with a coronagraph to block out overwhelming starlight, JWST was able to discern this faint planetary signature and conduct spectroscopy to analyze its chemical makeup.
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