On Christmas morning two years ago, astronomers and space fans received the gift they’d been waiting for 30 years: the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the world’s biggest, most daring endeavor to probe the earliest stars and galaxies within the universe.Â
This 12 months, the space observatory has continued to deliver breathtaking and scientifically priceless images of the cosmos. Here’s a glance back on the JWST discoveries that altered our understanding of the universe in 2023.Â
1. JWST takes a fresh have a look at our solar system
Although JWST’s purpose is to see a few of the first stars and galaxies within the universe, its fresh have a look at our own solar system has been nothing in need of breathtaking.
Take this image, which, in October, revealed a high-speed jet stream on Jupiter, previously unseen despite being over 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide and traveling at about 320 mph (515 km/h).
And back in June, JWST identified carbon dioxide within the salty liquid oceans of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa for the primary time. The space observatory also offered a recent have a look at Saturn on this image, which captures the gas giant’s delicate ring system and three of its 146 known moons. The gas giant is eerily dark when seen through JWST’s infrared eyes, because on this wavelength, “methane gas absorbs almost the entire sunlight falling on the atmosphere,” in line with NASA.
The powerful observatory also captured this stunning image of Uranus, its brightest moons and 11 of its 13 known dusty rings.
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope spots jet stream on Jupiter stronger than a Category 5 hurricaneÂ
2. Nearby exoplanet has abundant life-supporting molecules
In September, JWST discovered methane and carbon dioxide within the atmosphere of a reasonably nearby exoplanet named K2-18 b, which circles a cool star 120 light-years from Earth and is larger than our planet but smaller than the large planets in our solar system.
Previous observations with the Hubble Space Telescope had indicated that K2-18 b could also be s a “Hycean world,” an exoplanet that hosts thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres with oceans of liquid water underneath. Recent observations with JWST support that hypothesis, as the brand new data shows evidence for abundant methane and carbon dioxide but little ammonia.
“These results are the product of just two observations of K2-18 b, with many more on the way in which,” study co-author Savvas Constantinou, an astronomer on the University of Cambridge, said in an announcement. “This implies our work here is but an early demonstration of what Webb can observe in habitable-zone exoplanets.”
Read more here: Exoplanet’s surface could also be covered in oceans, James Webb Space Telescope finds
3. The JWST discovers its smallest object yet
In February, scientists were thrilled with JWST’s unexpected discovery of a small asteroid embedded within the predominant asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Like most residents of that region, the space rock, which is about as tall because the Washington Monument, is regarded as a remnant of the formation of the solar system and thus comprises tantalizing history about its evolution.Â
Asteroids lower than a mile long are difficult to identify with other telescopes, so the find underscored the telescope’s usefulness closer to home.
Read more here: The James Webb Space Telescope just found an asteroid by total accident, its smallest object yetÂ
4. The JWST finds massive, mysterious galaxies within the infant universe
In February, scientists announced the discovery of galaxies as massive because the Milky Way sprinkled across JWST’s images of the universe just 500 million to 700 million years after the Big Bang. From what existing theories and models tell us, the galaxies JWST found are too big, and the mature red stars in them too old, that the study authors said the find “creates problems for science.”
“It calls the entire picture of early galaxy formation into query,” study co-author Joel Leja, an astronomer at Penn State, said in an announcement.
Read more here: The James Webb Space Telescope discovers enormous distant galaxies that mustn’t existÂ
5. An intensifying debate over the universe’s expansion rate
We all know that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, but we do not know precisely how briskly. The difficulty has grow to be a debate centered on resolving the proper value of the Hubble constant, a crucial number for estimating the universe’s expansion rate. At once, model estimates for the Hubble constant don’t agree with values based on telescope observations.
This 12 months, JWST observed a category of stars generally known as Cepheid variables, which are often humongous stars some 100,000 times brighter than the sun and essentially the most reliable source to measure cosmic distances (and thus to tease out the universe’s expansion rate). But as a substitute of resolving the controversy, JWST’s data only deepened the continued debate over the Hubble constant.
“I do not care what the worth of the Hubble constant comes out to be,” said Adam Riess, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University and a Nobel laureate. “I need to grasp why our greatest tools — our gold standard tools — usually are not agreeing with one another.”
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope deepens major debate over universe’s expansion rate
6. Shining a highlight on the primary supermassive black holes
This 12 months, JWST helped astronomers see starlight from two early galaxies where they think certainly one of the primary supermassive black holes emerged. JWST observed the galaxies as they were when the universe was younger than 1 billion years, showing how, over time, black holes gain unfathomable masses — often tens of millions or billions of times that of the sun.
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope sees 1st starlight from ancient quasars in groundbreaking discoveryÂ
7. Complex organic molecules in a primordial galaxy
In June, astronomers revealed that JWST had detected intriguing carbon-based molecules, just like those present in oil and coal deposits on Earth, from over 12 billion years ago, when the universe was just 10% of its current age. In space, these molecules link to minuscule dust grains. Detecting them had been difficult due to the boundaries of our telescopes. Nonetheless, “Webb really makes searching for organic molecules look too easy,” Justin Spilker, an astronomer at Texas A&M University, told Space.com.
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope spies earliest complex organic molecules within the universe
8. Yup, Maisie’s galaxy is among the many earliest ever spotted
This blurry orange blob, imaged by JWST in summer 2022, is generally known as Maisie’s galaxy, and in August 2023, astronomers announced that it’s certainly one of the earliest galaxies ever discovered. The galaxy seems to have existed when the universe was only 390 million years old, making it certainly one of the 4 earliest galaxies ever seen.Â
“This was the undiscovered frontier where we actually didn’t know the way the galaxies formed or what they looked like until we went and searched for them with the JWST,” study creator Steven Finkelstein, an astronomer on the University of Texas at Austin, told Space.com.Â
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope confirms ‘Maisie’s galaxy’ is certainly one of the earliest ever seenÂ
9. Probably the most distant supermassive black hole ever seen
In July, astronomers announced that JWST had detected essentially the most distant lively supermassive black hole ever seen, whose host galaxy formed just 570 million years after the Big Bang. Nonetheless, this ancient black hole has puzzlingly low mass —  just 9 million times that of the sun. For comparison, most of those cosmic beasts weigh over 1 billion solar masses. “It remains to be difficult to clarify the way it formed so soon after the universe began,” the researchers said.
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope detects most distant lively supermassive black hole ever seenÂ
10. The JWST rediscovers an ancient ghostly galaxy
The JWST’s sighting of a fuzzy galaxy embedded deep inside a dust cloud has been of recent interest to astronomers, partially since it is seen because it appeared just 900 million years after the Big Bang, when the very first stars were appearing. But astronomers are also excited by the science lessons this galaxy is waiting to disclose, “potentially telling us there’s an entire population of galaxies which were hiding from us,” Jed McKinney, an astronomer on the University of Texas at Austin, said in an announcement.
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope pierces through dust to search out an ancient ghostly galaxyÂ
11. The JWST spots 3 possible fabled “dark stars”
In July, astronomers reported that JWST had found three brilliant objects that might possibly be “dark stars,” a reference to the Grateful Dead song “Dark Star.” The “stars” were originally tagged as galaxies by JWST in 2022.Â
“Once we have a look at the James Webb data, there are two competing possibilities for these objects,” Katherine Freese, a professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin, said in an announcement. “One is that they’re galaxies containing tens of millions of abnormal, population-III stars. The opposite is that they’re dark stars. And consider it or not, one dark star has enough light to compete with a complete galaxy of stars.”
Astronomers think these kind of stars are powered by dark matter, the elusive substance that makes up 85% of the matter in our universe but is invisible to telescopes. If dark stars really do exist, their presence would help solve the puzzling observations of how a really young universe grew to host so many large galaxies as observed by JWST, researchers say.
Read more here: Do fabled ‘dark stars’ actually exist? James Webb Space Telescope spots 3 candidates
12. The earliest galaxies looked surprisingly just like our Milky Way
Galaxy evolution theories have predicted that the earliest galaxies in our universe were too young to flaunt any noticeable features, like spiral arms, bars or rings; astronomers have thought these more complex structures began appearing about 6 billion years after the Big Bang. But this 12 months, JWST found that galaxies with such delicate shapes could have existed as early as 3.7 billion years after the Big Bang.Â
“Based on our results astronomers must rethink our understanding of the formation of the primary galaxies and the way galaxy evolution occurred over the past 10 billion years,” study co-author Christopher Conselice, a professor of astronomy on the University of Manchester within the U.K., said in an announcement.Â
Read more here: James Webb Space Telescope reveals ancient galaxies were more structured than scientists thought