NASA’s New $10 Billion Space Telescope Successfully Deploys Massive Mirror
In a recent test, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed its primary mirror into the same configuration it will have when in space. As…
James Webb Space Telescope
Read the latest news on the James Webb Space Telescope, the large, space-based observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. With its 6.5-meter primary mirror, Webb offers longer wavelength coverage and vastly improved sensitivity, allowing it to look further back in time to view the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and to peer inside dust clouds where stars and planets are forming today.
NASA’s New Space Telescope Will Seek Atmospheres Around Potentially Habitable Exoplanets
Larger, gas giant exoplanets will also fall under the James Webb Space Telescope’s gaze The TRAPPIST-1 system of exoplanets holds exciting possibilities in the search…
The James Webb Space Telescope Is the Largest, Most Powerful Space Telescope Ever Built [Video]
The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful and most technologically challenging space telescope ever built. The Webb Telescope is so large; it…
NASA’s Webb Telescope to Search for Rogue Planets and Young Brown Dwarfs
How small are the smallest celestial objects that form like stars, but don’t produce their own light? How common are they compared to full-fledged stars?…
Comparing the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes: From Ultraviolet to Infrared
This Hubblecast explores how the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s observations differ across different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, and how these observations will be complemented…
New Method of Finding Atmospheres on Rocky Exoplanets With Webb Space Telescope
When NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2021, one of its most anticipated contributions to astronomy will be the study of exoplanets—planets orbiting distant…
Alternative Earths – Secrets of Sustaining Life
Three billion years ago, Earth was a very different place. The sun that shone on its oceans and continents was not as bright as it…
NASA’s New Star-Watching Technology Has Thousands of Tiny Shutters
NASA scientists plan to demonstrate a revolutionary technology for studying hundreds of stars and galaxies at the same time — a new capability originally created…
NASA’s Webb Telescope Will Penetrate Space Dust to Reveal Milky Way’s Center
The center of our galaxy is a crowded place: A black hole weighing 4 million times as much as our Sun is surrounded by millions…
Merging Galaxies Spotted by Hubble Space Telescope
Over thirty years ago, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite discovered that the universe contained many extremely luminous galaxies, some more than a thousand times brighter than…
Webb Telescope Will Inspect Atmospheres of Gas Giant Exoplanets
In April 2018, NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Its main goal is to locate Earth-sized planets and larger “super-Earths” orbiting nearby stars…
NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Will Target Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most ambitious and complex space observatory ever built, will use its unparalleled infrared capabilities to study Jupiter’s Great Red…
Webb Space Telescope Will Capture Light From First Generation Stars
The first stars in the universe blazed to life about 200 to 400 million years after the big bang. Observing those very first individual stars…
NASA’s Webb Observatory Requires More Time, New Launch Target of May 2020
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope currently is undergoing final integration and test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. After an…
Webb Telescope Will Search for Interstellar Water & Other Building Blocks for Habitable Planets
Water is crucial for life, but how do you make water? Cooking up some H2O takes more than mixing hydrogen and oxygen. It requires the…
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Will Reveal the Secrets of Mars
The planet Mars has fascinated scientists for over a century. Today, it is a frigid desert world with a carbon dioxide atmosphere 100 times thinner…
Using Disequilibrium Biosignatures to Detect Exoplanet Life
As NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other new giant telescopes come online they will need novel strategies to look for evidence of life on…
James Webb Space Telescope to Investigate Mysterious Brown Dwarfs
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Astronomers are hopeful that the powerful infrared capability of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will…