Rocky planets could form in extreme radiation environment | Digital Trends

techDecember 3, 2023 FranklinWilbur

It takes a particular confluence of conditions for rocky planets like Earth to form, as not all stars in the universe are conducive to planet formation. Stars give off ultraviolet light, and the hotter the star burns, the more UV light it gives off. This radiation can be so significant that it prevents planets from forming from nearby dust and gas. However, the James Webb Space Telescope recently investigated a disk around a star thatseems like it could be forming rocky planets, even though nearby massive stars are pumping out huge amounts of radiation.

The disk of material around the star, called a protoplanetary disk, is located in the Lobster Nebula, one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. This region hosts massive stars that give off so much radiation that they can eat through a disk in as little as a million years, dispersing the material needed for planets to form. But the recently observed disk, named XUE 1, seems to be an exception.

This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming. ESO

The researchers used James Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to identify water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, and acetylene in the disk. Those are some of the building blocks for rocky planets and show that the disk is similar to other planet-forming disks, despite the high amount of UV radiation.

“We were surprised and excited because this is the first time that these molecules have been detected under these extreme conditions,” said one of the authors, Lars Cuijpers of Radboud University, in a statement.

The problem for this disk is that there are a number of nearby massive stars, so the disk is being bombarded by UV radiation from several sources. The disk does seem to be a bit smaller than expected, but it still appears that it could be capable of forming rocky planets. That means that rocky planets could form even in very extreme environments, if this particular disk is not an outlier.

“XUE 1 shows us that the conditions to form rocky planets are there, so the next step is to check how common that is,” said lead researcher María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. “We will observe other disks in the same region to determine the frequency with which these conditions can be observed.”

The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Wyatt Russell Thinks Thunderbolts Is Doing Something Different to Other Marvel Movies

techDecember 1, 2023 FranklinWilbur

Wyatt Russell Thinks Thunderbolts Is Doing Something Different to Other Marvel Movies

To the surprise of no one, a Five Nights at Freddy’s sequel is in the works. Tim Burton drops a new look at Beetlejuice 2 as filming wraps. Say hi to Godzilla and Kong in new Godzilla x Kong posters. Plus, another new look at the Kaiju No. 8 anime. To me, my spoilers!

“Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI Unlocked

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

According to a new report from The Hollywood Handle, Five Night’s at Freddy’s director Emma Tammi will return to direct a sequel for Blumhouse.

Level Up

Deadline reports screenwriters David Matalon (Totally Killer) and Matthew Altman (Feed the Devil) have sold Level Up, a spec script for a “a sci-fi action comedy” to The Hideaway Entertainment. The story is said to concern “a man who wakes up bound and blindfolded in a top-secret facility deep beneath Area 51, soon discovering that he has amazing but inexplicable new abilities. His only hope to escape is the alien he’s imprisoned with…and she hates humans. But as they navigate their way out, their unconventional alliance becomes the key to saving the world from an impending global catastrophe. “

Hellish Nell

Deadline also reports Aislinn Clarke is attached to direct Hellish Nell, “a chilling horror-thriller based on the real-life medium Helen Duncan, the last UK citizen convicted and imprisoned for witchcraft” for Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Based on the book Hellish Nell: The Curious Case of Britain’s Last Witch Trial and adapted for the screen by Chris Basler, the movie will follow “Helen’s harrowing journey as her innate powers change her life and those closest to her. ”

Thunderbolts

During his recent appearance at 92NY (via THR), Wyatt Russell stated Thunderbolts is “not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past.”

I have confidence it’s gonna be good. I know everybody is sort of on this Marvel train right now of things not going so well. I know [director Jake Schreier] so well and I know how smart Jake is and how much he cares about making something interesting and different and utilizing everyone’s talents to the best of their ability. And the story that I think they’ve come up with is really interesting — I know parts of the story and how the story works, I can’t talk about it.

But it’s not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past. I think that it’s gonna be a lot of fun but I think it will be something that hopefully Marvel fans will look at and go, ‘Oh OK, this is a little different, let’s go hard at it.’ And as far as how we are approaching it, it’s time to go to work a little bit, it’s time to make a good Marvel movie, so let’s do that and work hard at it and don’t take things for granted.

Beetlejuice 2

Filming has officially wrapped on Beetlejuice 2 according to Tim Burton on Instagram.

Just finished shooting Beetlejuice. Thank you to everyone involved.

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

DiscussingFilm has two new teaser posters for Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire.

T.I.M.

A “technologically integrated manservant” becomes dangerously obsessed with its creator in the trailer for T.I.M. starring Georgina Campbell and Eamon Farren.

T.I.M. (2024) – Official Trailer

The Orville

Adrianne Palicki provided a grim update on the future of The Orville during her recent appearance on the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum (via TV Line).

I don’t know, truly, the answer to that. I think there’s talk that it could possibly be something that certain people want to do, but it’s a really difficult show to shoot, man. We shot 33 episodes in six years.

It became an actual issue because there would be so much time in between in between seasons because Set [MacFarlane] wanted to write everything himself. So, it would just take so much time. At one point, we were like we have to fight the studio to give us a holding fee or something. J. Lee was eating saltines and Gatorade at one point because we just couldn’t afford anything. It was horrible.

Kaiju No. 8

Production IG has released a new still from its upcoming Kaiju No. 8 anime series.

Doctor Who

Finally, the Doctor and Donna are marooned without the TARDIS in a new radio trailer for “Wild Blue Yonder.”

Dr Who – WILD BLUE YONDER – Radio Trailer

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Stunning James Webb image shows the heart of our Milky Way | Digital Trends

techNovember 20, 2023 FranklinWilbur

Stunning James Webb image shows the heart of our Milky Way | Digital Trends

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of our galaxy, in a region close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. The image shows a star-forming region where filaments of dust and gas are clumping together to give birth to new baby stars.

The image was captured using Webb’s NIRCam instrument, a camera that looks in the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with shorter wavelengths shown in blue and cyan and longer wavelengths shown in yellow and red.

The full view of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet-unidentified features. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Crowe (UVA)

This region is called Sagittarius C, and is located around 300 light-years away from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. For reference, Earth is located much further away from the galactic center, at a distance of around 26,000 light years from Sagittarius A*.

There are thought to be as many as 500,000 stars in the Sagittarius C region, including many young protostars, some of which will go on to become main-sequence stars like our sun. As stars form, they give off powerful stellar winds which blow away nearby material and prevent more stars from forming very close to them.

These outflows are illuminated in the infrared wavelength, and the cyan-colored patches in the image are created by ionized gas. The young stars give off a great deal of energy, which ionizes the hydrogen gas around them and makes them glow in the infrared.

However, there are actually even more stars in this area than can be seen in the image. The pockets of darkness scattered throughout the image aren’t blank but are dense clouds that are dark in the infrared, including a large dense area in the heart of the region.

There are still some surprises to be found in the image too, with some features that scientists need to study in more depth. “Researchers say they have only begun to dig into the wealth of unprecedented high-resolution data that Webb has provided on this region, and many features bear detailed study,” Webb scientists write. “This includes the rose-colored clouds on the right side of the image, which have never been seen in such detail.”

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Webb investigates super puffy exoplanet where it rains sand | Digital Trends

techNovember 18, 2023 FranklinWilbur

Webb investigates super puffy exoplanet where it rains sand | Digital Trends

Exoplanets come in many forms, from dense, rocky planets like Earth and Mars to gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. But some planets discovered outside our solar system are even less dense than gas giants and are a type known informally as super-puff or cotton candy planets. One of the least dense exoplanets known, WASP-107b, was recently investigated using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the planet’s weather seems to be as strange as its puffiness.

The planet is more atmosphere than core, with a fluffy atmosphere in which Webb spotted water vapor and sulfur dioxide. Strangest of all, Webb also saw silicate sand clouds, suggesting that it would rain sand between the upper and lower layers of the atmosphere. The planet is almost as big as Jupiter but has a tiny mass similar to that of Neptune.

Artistic concept of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its parent star. Even though the rather cool host star emits a relatively small fraction of high-energy photons, they can reach deep into the planet’s fluffy atmosphere. Illustration: LUCA School of Arts, Belgium/ Klaas Verpoest; Science: Achrène Dyrek (CEA and Université Paris Cité, France), Michiel Min (SRON, the Netherlands), Leen Decin (KU Leuven, Belgium) / European MIRI EXO GTO team / ESA / NAS

“JWST is revolutionizing exoplanet characterization, providing unprecedented insights at remarkable speed,“ says lead author of the study, Leen Decin of KU Leuven, in a statement. “The discovery of clouds of sand, water, and sulfur dioxide on this fluffy exoplanet by JWST’s MIRI instrument is a pivotal milestone. It reshapes our understanding of planetary formation and evolution, shedding new light on our own solar system.”

Understanding the planet’s formation and evolution is important because it seems impossible that it could have formed in its current location. It is thought to have formed further out in the star system and migrated inward over time. That could allow for its extremely low density. Its close orbit to its star means it has a very high temperature, with its outer atmosphere reaching 500 degrees Celsius. But those temperatures are not normally hot enough to form clouds of silicate, which would be expected to form in lower layers where the temperatures are higher.

The researchers theorize that the sand rain is evaporating in the lower, hotter layers and the silicate vapor moves upwards in the atmosphere before recondensing to form clouds and falling as rain, similar to the water cycle on Earth.

“The value of JWST cannot be overstated: wherever we look with this telescope, we always see something new and unexpected,” said fellow researcher Paul Mollière from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy. “This latest result is no exception.”

The research will be published in the journal Nature.

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hubble-earth-sized-exoplanet | Digital Trends

techNovember 18, 2023 FranklinWilbur

hubble-earth-sized-exoplanet | Digital Trends

Although astronomers have now discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets outside of the solar system, the large majority of these planets are considerably larger than Earth. That’s partly because it’s easier to spot larger planets from tremendous distances across space. So it’s exciting when an Earth-sized planet is discovered — and the Hubble Space Telescope has recently confirmed that a nearby planet, which is diminutive by exoplanet standards, is 1.07 times the size of Earth.

The planet LTT 1445Ac was first discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2022, but it was hard to determine its exact size due to the plane of its orbit around its star as seen from Earth. “There was a chance that this system has an unlucky geometry and if that’s the case, we wouldn’t measure the right size. But with Hubble’s capabilities we nailed its diameter,” said lead researcher Emily Pass of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in a statement.

This is an artist’s concept of the nearby exoplanet, LTT 1445Ac, which is the size of Earth. The planet orbits a red dwarf star. The star is in a triple system, with two closely orbiting red dwarfs seen at upper right. The black dot in front of the foreground star is planet LTT 1445Ab, transiting the face of the star. Exoplanet LTT 1445Ac has a surface temperature of roughly 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The view is from 22 light-years away, looking back toward our Sun, which is the bright dot at lower right. Some of the background stars are part of the constellation Boötes. NASA, ESA, L. Hustak (STScI)

The new observations show that the planet is 1.07 times the diameter of Earth, so it is a rocky planet like Earth with similar surface gravity. However, it’s not a habitable place as its surface temperature is a scorching 260 degrees Celsius. It is part of a triple star system located just 22 light-years away, making it one of the nearest exoplanets that transit across a star.

“Transiting planets are exciting since we can characterize their atmospheres with spectroscopy, not only with Hubble but also with the James Webb Space Telescope,” Pass said. “Our measurement is important because it tells us that this is likely a very nearby terrestrial planet. We are looking forward to follow-on observations that will allow us to better understand the diversity of planets around other stars.”

One of the most important abilities of the James Webb Space Telescope is its capacity for studying the atmospheres of exoplanets, which is the next step in understanding these planets and looking for Earth-like planets. But this research shows that the venerable Hubble telescope, now more than 30 years old, continues to be important for exoplanet research as well.

“Hubble remains a key player in our characterization of exoplanets,” said Laura Kreidberg of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, who was not involved in this research. “There are precious few terrestrial planets that are close enough for us to learn about their atmospheres — at just 22 light years away, LTT 1445Ac is right next door in galactic terms, so it’s one of the best planets in the sky to follow up and learn about its atmospheric properties.”

The research is published in The Astronomical Journal.

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The Star Wars: Ahsoka Hot Toys Figure Is Battle-Ready

techNovember 18, 2023 FranklinWilbur

The Star Wars: Ahsoka Hot Toys Figure Is Battle-Ready

Image: Hot Toys

Former Jedi Knight and forever warrior against the dark side Ahsoka Tano gets her own fierce figure inspired by her live-action look in Disney+ and Lucasfilm’s Ahsoka.

Presented by Sideshow and Hot Toys, the sixth-scale collectible figure of Ahsoka features a fantastic likeness of star Rosario Dawson; it includes two interchangeable face sculpts with different expressions inspired by the look of the Star Wars heroine, complete with articulated lekku. The various sculpts portray Ahsoka in fierce action, and she comes outfitted in her wardrobe with her paired lightsabers as seen in the Disney+ series.

Pre-orders are available now; the figure will set you back $300 and is expected to ship between October 2024 and March 2025.

Take a look at the gallery for a close up look!

Iman Vellani Details Her X-Men Comics Writing Process

techNovember 17, 2023 FranklinWilbur

Iman Vellani Details Her X-Men Comics Writing Process

Finally, Iman Vellani can geek out publicly about going from Marvel fan to Ms. Marvel and The Marvels star to Marvel Comics writer.

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The actress and all around Marvel geek—who, unlike most Marvel geeks, has direct access to Marvel boss Kevin Feige—was a recent guest on Late Night with Seth Myers, where she talked about her jump into comic book writing for Kamala Khan, the character she plays in Ms. Marvel and The Marvels. In Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant, Vellani gets to pen the future of the character, who’s now dealing with her new status as dually an Inhuman and Mutant after her death and resurrection over the summer in the X-Men one-shot Hellfire Gala.

Speaking on the talk show, Vellani discussed getting into the right mindset for charting Kamala’s path in a universe with deep lore. “I needed to do a lot of X-Men research and I never really read those comics because they’re so intimidating. There’s a million of them,” she told Myers. “So I watched the X-Men ‘90s cartoon in the background. I had Grant Morrison’s New X-Men on my laptop. And then I was reading Jonathan Hickman’s new X-Men. It was so much X-Men all at once.”

Vellani also revealed this opportunity was supported by Marvel every step of the way. “It’s the most special thing ever. I can’t be on your show without bringing up Sana Amanat. She’s the reason this happened,” she said. “[Amanat] co-created the character and she made a couple of calls to Marvel editorial and forced them to let me write it. And I really don’t know what she said to them, but it’s real. And that’s my last name, which is so cool,” she said pointing to her name on the comic book cover. She added how surreal the learning experience was for her, including “how cool it is to receive art every morning,” she said. “It’s either the most validating thing when they draw exactly what you wrote or you’re like, ‘Okay, maybe I need to fix my writing a little bit.’”

She also shared another huge, if unexpected, inspiration: Billy Joel. “Billy Joel’s River of Dreams is one of my favorite albums, my favorite song,” Vellani explained. “And he very much explores where we go. And I mean—it’s a play on stream of consciousness and dealing with our inner demons and finding yourself.” Joel’s music guided her as she worked through Kamala becoming the Mutant she was meant to be. “I think that’s a lot of what Kamala’s journey is. And [in] my book, she’s a Mutant now and that’s a whole new label that she has a has to adapt to… the entire world’s perspective kind of shifts on her. And now that she has this label, how she perceives herself has shifted. We literally put her in her own dreams and she has to fight off her fears and doubts.”

Watch the full the interview below!

Iman Vellani Dreams of Being Cursed Out by Samuel L. Jackson and Serenaded by Billy Joel

The Marvels is out now in theaters and Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant is available in comic shops and online now.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Astronomers discover how tiny dwarf galaxies form fossils | Digital Trends

techNovember 9, 2023 FranklinWilbur

Astronomers discover how tiny dwarf galaxies form fossils | Digital Trends

Galaxies come in many different shapes and sizes, including those considerably smaller than our Milky Way. These smaller galaxies, called dwarf galaxies, can have as few as 1,000 stars, compared to the several hundred billion in our galaxy. And when these dwarf galaxies age and begin to erode away, they can transform into an even smaller and more dense shape, called an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy.

The Gemini North telescope has recently been studying more than 100 of these eroding dwarf galaxies, seeing how they lose their outer stars and gas to become ultra-compact dwarf galaxies or UCDs.

This illustration shows a dwarf galaxy in the throes of transitioning to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy as it’s stripped of its outer layers of stars and gas by a nearby larger galaxy. Ultra-compact dwarf galaxies are among the densest stellar groupings in the Universe. Being more compact than other galaxies with similar mass, but larger than star clusters — the objects they most closely resemble — these mystifying objects have defied classification. The missing piece to this puzzle has been a lack of sufficient transitional, or intermediate objects to study. A new galaxy survey, however, fills in these missing pieces to show that many of these enigmatic objects are likely formed from the destruction of dwarf galaxies. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani

“Our results provide the most complete picture of the origin of this mysterious class of galaxy that was discovered nearly 25 years ago,” said one of the researchers, NOIRLab astronomer Eric Peng in a statement. “Here we show that 106 small galaxies in the Virgo cluster have sizes between normal dwarf galaxies and UCDs, revealing a continuum that fills the ‘size gap’ between star clusters and galaxies.”

While astronomers did predict that dwarf galaxies could become UCDs, they hadn’t observed many cases of one transforming into the other. So this study looked for these “missing links” to see how this transition occurred. They found that these in-between galaxies were most often located near larger galaxies, which stripped away stars and gas from the small dwarf galaxies to leave a UCD behind.

“Once we analyzed the Gemini observations and eliminated all the background contamination, we could see that these transition galaxies existed almost exclusively near the largest galaxies. We immediately knew that environmental transformation had to be important,” explained lead author Kaixiang Wang of Peking University.

These objects were spotted using data from sky surveys, which was followed up using observations from Gemini North. That allowed the researchers to pick out the small dwarf galaxies from the many background galaxies visible in the sky.

“It’s exciting that we can finally see this transformation in action,” said Peng. “It tells us that many of these UCDs are visible fossil remnants of ancient dwarf galaxies in galaxy clusters, and our results suggest that there are likely many more low-mass remnants to be found.”

The research is published in the journal Nature.

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See the stunning first images taken by the Euclid telescope | Digital Trends

techNovember 8, 2023 FranklinWilbur

See the stunning first images taken by the Euclid telescope | Digital Trends

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first full-color images taken by Euclid, a space telescope that was launched earlier this year to probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Euclid will image a huge area of the sky to build up a 3D map of the universe, helping researchers to track the dark matter that is clustered around galaxies and the dark energy that counteracts gravity to push galaxies apart.

The Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, is part of the Orion constellation. About 1,375 light-years away, it is the closest giant star-forming region to Earth. With Euclid, which captured this image, scientists hope to find many dim and previously unseen Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as baby stars. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Euclid is designed with a wide field of view, meaning it is unlike telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope which is designed to look in very high resolution at specific targets. Instead, Euclid looks over a large area to capture views that will cover one-third of the sky and contain billions of galaxies. Even so, Euclid is still powerful enough to see some targets in stunning detail, like this image of the famous Horsehead Nebula which is located 1,375 light-years away.

Primarily, though, Euclid will be used to look at galaxies on a larger scale, such as an image that shows the Perseus cluster. This cluster contains thousands of galaxies, with hundreds of thousands more galaxies visible in the background.

One of the first images captured by Euclid shows the Perseus cluster, a group of thousands of galaxies located 240 million light-years from Earth. The closest galaxies appear as swirling structures while hundreds of thousands of background galaxies are visible only as points of light. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

“We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby Universe. Now we are ready to observe billions of galaxies, and study their evolution over cosmic time,” said René Laureijs, ESA Euclid Project Scientist, in a statement.

The spiral galaxy IC 342, located about 11 million light-years from Earth, lies behind the crowded plane of the Milky Way: Dust, gas, and stars obscure it from our view. Euclid used its near-infrared instrument to peer through the dust and study it. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Euclid’s preliminary test images were released in August this year, but soon after the telescope developed an issue with its guidance system. The instrument which was designed to lock onto stars was intermittently failing, causing errors. Fortunately, that issue was fixed with a software update in October, and the telescope is now able to capture these beautiful images of various targets.

The galaxy NGC 6822 is located 1.6 million light-years from Earth. Euclid was able to capture this view of the entire galaxy and its surroundings in high resolution in about one hour, which isn’t possible with ground-based telescopes or targeted telescopes (such as NASA’s Webb) that have narrower fields of view. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

“Euclid’s first images mark the beginning of a new era of studying dark matter and dark energy,” said Mike Seiffert, Euclid project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This is the first space telescope dedicated to dark universe studies, and the sheer scale of the data we’re going to get out of this will be unlike anything we’ve had before. These are big mysteries, so it’s exciting for the international cosmology community to see this day finally arrive.”

This sparkly image shows Euclid’s view of a globular cluster – a collection of gravitationally bound stars that don’t quite form a galaxy – called NGC 6397. No other telescope can capture an entire globular cluster in a single observation and distinguish so many stars within it. ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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James Webb snaps an image of the famous Crab Nebula | Digital Trends

techNovember 4, 2023 FranklinWilbur

James Webb snaps an image of the famous Crab Nebula | Digital Trends

Located 6,500 light-years away, the Crab Nebula is famous among astronomers for its elaborate and beautiful structure. A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows off the gorgeous nebula as seen in the infrared wavelength, highlighting the filaments of dust that create its cage-like shape.

The nebula is a supernova remnant, the result of a massive star that exploded at the end of its life centuries ago. The supernova was observed on Earth in 1054 CE, and since then astronomers have watched the nebula that resulted from that explosion grow and change.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula in the search for answers about the supernova remnant’s origins. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have revealed new details in infrared light. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Tea Temim (Princeton University)

The nebula has previously been imaged by other telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope which looks primarily in the optical wavelength and, more recently, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer observatory which looks in the X-ray wavelength. These results have been combined into a previous image showing the nebula in optical, infrared, and X-ray.

The new Webb image, however, shows different aspects of the object. Using its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instruments, Webb can see the structures of gas filaments, which are shown in red and orange, as well as the regions of dust that appear as the fluffy yellow, white, and green areas. Another aspect picked up in the infrared image is a type of radiation called synchrotron radiation, created by a rotating neutron star with a strong magnetic field, which is shown as the white milky substance in the interior of the nebula.

The nebula is being studied to learn about how it formed from the supernova event, which threw out clouds of material when the star exploded.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” said lead researcher Tea Temim of Princeton University in a statement.

There will be yet more data about the Crab Nebula coming soon, as Hubble has also recently re-imaged the object for the first time since it took its original observations in 1999 and 2000.