In the last week, NASA pulled back the curtains on a photo gallery that flags off the next era of space exploration: the first images from the James Webb Telescope. The advanced Webb Telescope gave us some of the most detailed views of the farthest cosmic objects in the galaxy. But that was not the only big space news from last week. Here is our weekly recap of all the space news from last week.
In the vast depths of space, entire galaxies can collide and merge with each other in a process that throws out vast nebulae of dust and debris that will lead to the birth of new stars. Webb’s predecessor Hubble captured such an event: CGCG 396-2. CGCG 396-2 is an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger that is 520 million light-years away from our planet in the direction of the constellation Orion.
This merger was observed by Galaxy Zoo volunteers. Galaxy Zoo is a citizen science project where thousands of volunteers classify galaxies to help scientists sort through vast amounts of data generated by various robotic telescopes. The most astronomically interesting objects from the Galaxy Zoo project are selected for follow-up observations with the Hubble after a public vote.
SpaceX’s booster rocket, the first half of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket system burst into flames as it was undergoing pre-launch tests on Monday. In the past, SpaceX has launched early prototypes of Starship’s top half close to 10 kilometres off the ground many times but it has never launched the fully stacked, nearly 122 metres tall rocket system to orbit. This is a significantly more challenging task.
Company founder Elon Musk later said that the booster rocket will probably return to its launch mount in Texas this week. Musk told Reuters, “Damage is minor, but booster will be transferred back to the high bay for inspections, returning to the launch stand probably next week.” The company had targeted the end of summer for the spacecraft’s debut orbital flight but Monday’s explosion called that timeline into question.
Virgin Galactic has signed an agreement with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build the former’s new twin-fuselage carrier plane called the SpaceShipTwo. SpaceShipTwo is designed to ferry the company’s next-generation spaceship toward space.
Virgin said the new carrier planes, named “motherships,” are designed for faster production rates and to fly over 200 flights per year. Under the agreement signed by the two companies, Aurora will deliver parts of the craft for assembly in 2025.
NASA unveiled the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope this week and they were as stunning as we could imagine it. The first image shared by the space agency was that of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and other cosmic objects in a deep field image. Webb took about four days to create the image whereas Hubble took over ten days for a much lower-resolution image.
The second ‘image’ was spectrum data of the gas giant planet WASP-96b, which is located nearly 1,150 light years. The first spectrum of an exoplanet taken by Webb is probably the most exciting ‘picture’ for scientists as it revealed the tell-tale signs of water vapour on the distant planet. It is the most detailed near-infrared transmission spectrum of an exoplanet captured to date and covers an exceptionally wide range of wavelength.
The third image was that of a planetary nebula surrounding a dying star. Called the Southern Ring Nebula or the “Eight-burst Nebula,” its image showed for the first time that the second dimmer star at its centre is surrounded by dust. The other brighter star is younger and might project its own planetary nebula in the future.
The fourth image was a huge mosaic of Stephan’s Quintet and is the largest image taken by Webb to date. The image covers over 150 million pixels and is constructed from 1,000 separate image files. It shows the dramatic impact of shockwaves as galaxies smash through the cluster. The image also shows signs of a supermassive black hole at the centre of one of the galaxies in unprecedented detail.
The last and final shared by NASA was that of NGC 3324, a star-forming region in the Carina nebula. The image looked like it had “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars. This region of the nebula was captured in infrared for the first time and shows previously invisible areas of star birth.
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