There are a lot of scientific treasures found by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers have been busy with possible discoveries since the public release of the first images of the telescope.
"It's like a birthday and Christmas and an anniversary and a graduation and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah all wrapped into one for us," says Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago.
It works better than most people thought. Rachel says it's a miracle. This is something I have never experienced before.
The few stunning images that got featured at press conferences on July 11 and 12 represent a fraction of what the telescope has seen since it launched in December
It was really exciting to see the initial unveil. It wasn't until two days later that the actual work began. The first data became available at that time.
"Scientists want the data to be accurate," says Bentz. We would like to pull down the scientific data from which those pretty pictures were made.
The researchers rushed to download everything gathered by the instrument so they could look through it. A group of people are looking at a field of thousands of galaxies that have been studied many times before.
It's like putting glasses on when you see the images with james wbb. Things we could not see before are clear now. It's been a lot. It's been difficult.
Astronomers tell their friends about each revelation and it's an emotional experience. A friend of Jessica's told her about a new analysis of the atmosphere of an exoplanet, which is a planet that is outside our solar system.
Spake says it's the most beautiful look he's ever seen. I was crying.
This is what it looks like when humans see something that no human has ever seen before. "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy." (Sagan... who else?) We can't wait to share it with you all. #JWST pic.twitter.com/WT0XIf9lqk
— Natalie Batalha (@nbatalha) July 15, 2022
A few scientific reports have started popping up online, but researchers usually keep their discoveries secret until they're officially published.
One of the main goals for the James Webb Space Telescope was to find extremely distant galaxies, ones that are so far away that the light from them had to travel for the entire history of the universe. Astronomers believe they've seen some.
Steven Finkelstein is an astronomer with the University of Texas at Austin. It looks very exciting.
Scientists were amazed by the views of Jupiter captured by the telescope.
The rings have been looked at before, but to see them all together in a single picture was amazing. Imke de Pater is an astronomer at the University of Berkeley.
She and others were confused by a strange line that appeared around the edge of the planet. We're looking into that to find out what it is. Is it hazy? Is it something else from gasses? It is interesting.
The telescope keeps making more observations.
It's staring at a planet out beyond our solar system on July 20 and July 21. We are going to be looking at the planet for two full days.
He says our solar system doesn't have anything like it because he has been studying it for more than a decade. It is larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, with its true nature obscured by clouds or haze that other telescopes can't penetrate.
By this weekend, Bean and his colleagues will know what the James Webb Space Telecope was able to see.
They just have to be patient. At some point, I'll look up at the sky and be like, "JWST is doing its thing right now, and it's looking at my favorite planet." That's a big deal.
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