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Webb begins the hunt for the first stars and habitable worlds

#Webb #begins #hunt #stars #habitable #worlds

The first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope were unveiled this week, but its cosmic voyage of discovery has only just begun.

Here’s a look at two early projects that will use the observatory’s powerful in-orbit instruments.

– The first stars and galaxies –

One of the telescope’s great promises is its ability to study the earliest phase of cosmic history, just after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The further away objects are from us, the longer it takes for their light to reach us, and so looking back at the distant universe is a look back into the deep past.

“We will look back to this earliest period to see the first galaxies to form in the history of the Universe,” said Dan Coe, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute who specializes in the early Universe.

Astronomers have so far gone 97 percent of the way back to the Big Bang, but “we only see these tiny red dots when we look at these galaxies so far away.”

“With Webb, we will finally be able to look inside these galaxies and see what they are made of.”

While today’s galaxies are shaped like spirals or ellipses, the earliest building blocks were “lumpy and irregular,” and Webb was meant to reveal older, redder stars within, more like our Sun, that were invisible to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Coe has two Webb projects ahead – observing one of the most distant known galaxies, MACS0647-JD, which he discovered in 2013, and Earendel, the most distant star ever discovered, found in March of this year.

While the public has been drawn to Webb’s stunning images, captured in the infrared because light from the distant cosmos has spread into these wavelengths as the universe has expanded, scientists are equally interested in spectroscopy.

Analysis of an object’s light spectrum reveals its properties, including temperature, mass and chemical composition – practically forensic science for astronomy.

Science does not yet know what the earliest stars will look like, which are likely to have formed 100 million years after the Big Bang.

“We could see things that are very different,” said Coe — so-called “Population III” stars, which are thought to be much more massive than our own Sun and “pristine,” meaning made entirely of hydrogen passed and helium.

These eventually exploded in supernovae and contributed to the cosmic chemical enrichment that produced the stars and planets we see today.

Some doubt these pristine Population III stars will ever be found — but that won’t stop the astronomical community from trying.

– Anyone out there? –

Astronomers have gained time on Webb based on a competitive selection process open to all, regardless of how far along they are in their careers.

Olivia Lim, a graduate student at the University of Montreal, is only 25 years old. “I wasn’t even born when people started talking about this telescope,” she told AFP.

Their goal: to observe the roughly Earth-sized rocky planets orbiting a star called Trappist-1. They are so close together that from the surface of one you could see the others clearly in the sky.

“The Trappist 1 system is unique,” explains Lim. “Almost all conditions there are favorable for the search for life outside our solar system.”

Additionally, three of Trappist-1’s seven planets are in Goldilocks’ “habitable zone,” neither too close nor too far from their star, giving them the right temperatures for liquid water on their surfaces.

The system is “only” 39 light-years away – and we can see the planets passing in front of their star.

This makes it possible to observe the drop in brightness that occurs as the star crosses and use spectroscopy to infer planetary properties.

It’s not yet known if these planets have an atmosphere, but that’s what Lim wants to find out. When this happens, the light that penetrates these atmospheres is “filtered” by the molecules they contain, leaving signatures for Webb.

The jackpot for them would be the detection of water vapor, carbon dioxide and ozone.

Trappist-1 is such a prime target that several other science teams have also been granted time to observe it.

Finding signs of life there, if any, will take time, according to Lim. But “everything we’re doing this year are really important steps toward that ultimate goal.”

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#Webb #begins #hunt #stars #habitable #worlds

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