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Astronomers came together in January to present their newest research, and not surprisingly, the Winter AAS meeting was heavy on news from JWST. What were some of the new results that were announced?
Show Notes
Escape Velocity Space News (CosmoQuest)
NowMedia Channel (YouTube)
First Science Results from JWST (Space Telescope Science Institute)
241st AAS Meeting (American Astronomical Society)
First Images Shared From Webb Telescope Reveal Unseen Universe (ESA Webb)
VIDEO: AAS 241 Press Conference: Building Systems in Our Local Universe (AAS Press Office)
VIDEO: AAS 241 Press Conference: Eyes on Galaxies with JWST (AAS Press Office)
NASA’s Webb Reveals Cosmic Cliffs, Glittering Landscape of Star Birth (NASA)
Close-up of “Proplyds” in the Orion Nebula (Hubblesite)
Herbig-Haro Object (Swinburne University)
Carina Nebula Jets (NIRCam Narrowband Filters) (ESA Webb)
JWST Sees Furious Star Formation in a Stellar Nursery (Universe Today)
The Pillars of Creation (NASA)
NASA’s Webb Takes Star-Filled Portrait of Pillars of Creation (NASA)
The Initial Mass Function (The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)
Pleiades – or 7 Sisters – known around the world (EarthSky)
Webb Reveals Shells of Dust Surrounding Brilliant Binary Star System (Webb Telescope)
NASA’s Webb Uncovers New Details in Pandora’s Cluster (NASA)
NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet (NASA)
Astronomers Grapple with JWST’s Discovery of Early Galaxies (Scientific American)
Two Remarkably Luminous Galaxy Candidates at z ≈ 10–12 Revealed by JWST (The Astrophysical Journal Letters)
Early Results from GLASS-JWST. III. Galaxy Candidates at z ∼9–15* (The Astrophysical Journal Letters)
Gravitational Lensing (Hubblesite)
LAMBDA – ΛCDM Model of Cosmology (NASA)
NASA’s Webb Telescope Reveals Links Between Galaxies Near and Far (NASA)
Coelacanth (Smithsonian Ocean)
NASA’s Webb Confirms Its First Exoplanet (Webb Telescope)
NASA’s Webb Reveals an Exoplanet Atmosphere as Never Seen Before (NASA)
New Webb Image Reveals Dusty Disk Like Never Seen Before (NASA)
The Late Heavy Bombardment: A Violent Assault on Young Earth (Space.com)
NASA’s Webb Catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms (NASA)
VIDEO: The Science of the L1527 “Butterfly” with Dr. Karl Stapelfeldt (Weekly Space Hangout)
NASA’s Webb Captures Dying Star’s Final ‘Performance’ in Fine Detail (NASA)
Transcript
Transcriptions provided by GMR Transcription Services
[Intro Music]
Fraser Cain: AstronomyCast Episode 667: JWST First Science Results. Welcome to AstronomyCast, your weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain. I’m the publisher of Universe Today. With me is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela, how you doing?
Dr. Pamela Gay: I am doing well. I had a super exciting thing happen on Saturday.
Fraser Cain: What happened?
Dr. Pamela Gay: The very first episode of Escape Velocity Space News aired on NowMedia television. Our new TV show has gone out to the masses, and we’re gonna be releasing the podcast and YouTube versions this week. So, I’m hoping everyone will go check it out.
Fraser Cain: Well, that’s exciting! If you want to watch it on the television, where do you have to live?
Dr. Pamela Gay: So, I can’t keep track of all of the cities they have coverage in. I know that they’re in Houston, I wanna say San Antonio, Atlanta, Mexico City, and there are other cities. But if you go to nowmedia.tv, you can find out all the cities, –
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – and they also go out on Roku and of course, on their own website.
Fraser Cain: That’s cool. So, if you have a Roku, you can subscribe to the Now –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yep.
Fraser Cain: – television channel, and then you can watch. Or you can just watch it on YouTube.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Right. It’s funny, but like what is a television show in this modern age?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Well, it’s so weird, ‘cause it’s Patreon-funded. When did TV start to be Patreon-funded? But –
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – this is where we live, people.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Astronomists came together in January to present their newest research. And not surprisingly, the Winter AAS meeting was heavy on news from the James Webb Space Telescope. What were some of the new results that were announced? Now, you didn’t attend this AAS, did you? You don’t normally do.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Remotely.
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: COVID is still bad enough that going to a 100-person event last weekend was like the limits, and I still –
Fraser Cain: It’s scary!
Dr. Pamela Gay: – was exposed to COVID, but –
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – same room, different time blocks.
Fraser Cain: Right.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: But you didn’t get it?
Dr. Pamela Gay: No.
Fraser Cain: Good. Yeah. It’s funny. So, the last time we were together was at the Winter meeting of the AAS in Honolulu in –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – 2020, and this was about a month and a half, two months into the beginnings of the pandemic. And I think we even had this very conversation.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: But this is probably the last time that we’re gonna be traveling for a while. And true enough, I haven’t been on an airplane since. So, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: – 2020, 2021, is it three years now I haven’t been on an airplane?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: But I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m almost ready to get back on an airplane and start to travel again. But I’ve been busy with the forest. So, I guess what were the big… I guess we’re just gonna dive into this. Let’s talk about this. As I mentioned in my introduction, right? It was JWST news. Why was it so heavy on news from Webb?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Well, it was that sweet spot where folks started getting their data about six months ago. And six months is kind of the minimum amount of time needed for a well-funded research team, especially if there’s a Summer in there, to go from data in hand to analyzed result that’s ready to be presented, and in some cases, published.
Fraser Cain: And so, a lot of the time, from up to this point, the news that we’ve been seeing has been someone from NASA has gone, “Here’s a cool picture!” And posting it on the NASA website with the bare minimum description, or some researchers, or there’s been stuff that’s been publicly available that people are pouring over, because some of the stuff is in open access. But a lot of it is proprietary research, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yep.
Fraser Cain: – they’ve booked time on the telescope, they got their data. Only they got it, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Mm-hmm.
Fraser Cain: – and now they’ve had up to six months to analyze it, process it, and they were able to start explaining it to their cohorts at the American Astronomical Society meeting.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes. And the results that came out spanned everything from star formation in a whole variety of star-forming regions to remarkable observations of some of the earliest-detected galaxies in the universe. And it’s hard to even figure out where to start, because really, the science spans the entire gamut of the profession, basically. There were even a couple of planets.
Fraser Cain: Right. So, I mean, were there any large themes?
Dr. Pamela Gay: I think there were two big themes. One was star formation observed with JWST, and the other one was these early galaxies, and do they / don’t they break our understanding of how our universe formed and evolved.
Fraser Cain: All right. Well, let’s go into star formation then.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes. So, back in July, we got that amazing – they named it, “Cosmic Cliffs Image” –
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – of the Carina Nebula, and the set of filters that they turned into that beautiful color image included filters that light couldn’t pass through. So, you have this yellow wall with the blue nebulosity above it. Now, when they instead only look at some of the filters, they’re able to see through that yellow wall to all the star formation that’s going on within. The Carina Nebula is known to be a remarkable star-forming region. There have been papers from Hubble coming out detailing solar system proplyds.
These are the cocoon-y formations where a star is just starting to light up in the core. There have been objects called, “Herbig-Haro” objects that are protostars that as material flows into them, some of it gets ejected then through jets in the Axis of Rotation. There’s been a whole variety of these different, young, active stars detected in the past, but the detections have always been, “We kinda, sorta think we’re seeing this, but we’re not really sure.” Well, when JWST hit the scene, it not only was able to go, “Yes, all of those are real, Herbig-Haro, Herbig-Haro, Young Star, Young Star,” –
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – identifying all of them. It was able to also identify additional new objects, additional new jets. And the jets in particular are what we’re interested in, because as a molecular cloud like the one that led to all this star formation in Carina, as it fragments and collapses into individual stars, the biggest fragments collapse down fastest. Gravity does that. Biggest stars form first, you get these jets coming out.
Those jets then smush the other fragments around them, thus triggering more and more star formation. Hollowing out nebula over time. This is a stellar feedback mechanism. And well, once you turn off that yellow wall by going to longer wavelengths, you can see the stellar formation and the stellar feedback in action. And Carina was just one example of this. Hubble famously observed the pillars of creation, and that image has been used in just about everything since then.
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Well, JWST got their own version of that image that we saw last Fall. And yet again, we’re seeing more of this star formation, identifying the details. And this is starting to allow us to get at something I think we’re gonna start hearing more and more about again. And this is what’s called the “Initial Mass Function,” which is the distribution of sizes that stars form in out of different collapsing and fragmenting molecular clouds.
And by looking at all these different systems that have different contents, different masses, and seeing how stars of different masses form in different numbers, it starts to allow us to get down to the population statistics of these regions in ways we couldn’t when we couldn’t look through the gas. So, yay for x-ray vision that’s actually infrared vision.
Fraser Cain: And I think that release was the perfect example of this first initial showoff of a really great picture, but with not a lot of science going –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Right.
Fraser Cain: – on.
Dr. Pamela Gay: There was no science.
Fraser Cain: They were like, “Here…” Well, there was SOME, I mean. But here is the Carina Nebula. Look at these cool cosmic cliffs. And these –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: – described some of the features, right? You know what you’ve got this. When you think about that picture, you’re seeing the combined stellar wind of all of the stars that have already mostly formed and blown out their neighborhood.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Right.
Fraser Cain: And it’s like this combined wind that they’re creating that is continuing to pile up and blow away this material off into space, and eventually, the whole area will be cleared. We’ll feel a lot more like say, the Pleiades. But –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – for now, you’ve got the parts that are in Nebula and out of Nebula, and then you got to see a few little knots and regions and stuff. But this time around, now they’ve gone back through and they’ve measured things, and they’re saying like, “Here’s a star, and there’s a star, and here’s the jet.” And then, they’re measuring the amounts and quantities, and they’re also looking at the kinds of chemicals that are piling up. And so, you get this detailed analysis of six months of the astronomers doing their job on what was a beautiful picture. And in many cases, this is probably some of your phone wallpaper right now. But we got the analysis of that picture, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – and that for astronomers is really interesting, because no star-forming region has been imaged at this level. And I think like with Hubble, I mean, we have images of Carina Nebula taken by Hubble, and we have images –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – from the Eagle Nebula. But Hubble has some infrared capability. And so, Webb was able to give far more resolution, and also peer through a lot of the gas and dust that’s obscured to Hubble to see even more features. And so, they’re looking at many new objects that had never been seen before, as well as being able to confirm the objects that Hubble had already seen. So yeah, it’s just amazing research. And that is, I think, just the perfect example of a gorgeous picture, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – and now the follow-along science, which is just as interesting to astronomers. And hopefully, to the public.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And with both of these systems, it’s really a matter of looking at the forest, where we’re seeing the entire region of star formation going on. But there were also opportunities where it was able to focus in on not just individual trees, but their leaves, you might say, to carry that analogy far too far.
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And this is where they have this tremendous image of Wolf-Rayet 140, which is a binary system with a Wolf-Rayet star. It’s about 10 solar masses, and a companion that is an O-type star about 30 solar masses. And these two systems go around each other every 7.9 years. And when they do, it compresses out a shell of material. And so, we’re able to see these individual shells that are getting compressed together through orbital mechanics and gravity playing together as this young star is settling down into its very short life.
It’s these kinds of details that JWST is going to allow us to hopefully start to understand some of the more complex interactions that just haven’t made sense to us as we’d like. We’re seeing the same thing happening with planetary nebula, and other forming stars, and there’s just where do you want to go next?
Fraser Cain: Yeah. All right. So, the next big theme was on the cosmology side. The large-scale –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – structures in the universe. The things that are most distant.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And at the AAS meeting, the research that we had to look at the published results are based on two different fields that contain galaxy clusters that we’re using to basically fast track us to being able to see the earliest objects in the universe in as little telescope time as possible. These two fields included an Abell cluster, a SMACS cluster. And these two systems, their mass allowed us to see magnified and enhanced amounts of light from galaxies we now have confirmation are 350 and 450 million years after the Big Bang is when we’re seeing them.
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And they were already formed, and they’re extremely bright. There’s two different competing research teams that published on these. One was led by Rohan Naidu from MIT, and the other one was led by Marco Castellano of the Astronomical Observatory of Rome. And so, when you have two different teams, both conforming the same lookback time for these two systems, that tells us that yes, JWST is seeing things that long ago. And we also see evidence – still needs to be conformed, still needs to go through peer review – potentially of bright galaxies that we’re seeing them as they appear just 200 million years after –
Fraser Cain: Wow!
Dr. Pamela Gay: – the Big Bang. Yeah.
Fraser Cain: And that’s within the capacity probably through gravitational lensing though. It’s gonna take…
Dr. Pamela Gay: Exactly.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. And I think one of the things that’s quite surprising is how well-formed these galaxies are. I know with one piece of research, they saw fairly mature-looking spiral galaxies just –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yes.
Fraser Cain: – like maybe a billion years after the Big Bang. Galaxies that would look identical to what we have today.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And this is one of the things that the high resolution that JWST is capable of acquiring data at is allowing us to see that there were already not just brighter-than-we-expected galaxies, but bigger-than-we-expected galaxies, and more maturely-formed galaxies. And this is causing a rash of two different kinds of papers. One is saying, “Cosmology is wrong! We don’t –
Fraser Cain: Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – understand it! JWST overthrows cosmology!”
Fraser Cain: I don’t think that cosmologists are making that claim. I think you have some people who are alternative theorists who have been pushing that diatribe for decades now, and are looking for any little crack in observations to push that narrative.
Dr. Pamela Gay: So, the narrative –
Fraser Cain: No.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – is related the structures of Lambda Cold Dark Matter, where the question is can we understand the ability of Dark Matter, which we don’t fully understand, that is moving fairly slowly – that’s the cold part – to quickly form massive structures. So, on one hand, we have the folks that have been doing some fairly sophisticated computer modeling saying, “Yeah, you can’t get things that big that fast.” Now, on the other hand, you have the star formation people going, “Wait! Wait! Early universe! We don’t understand the first stars.”
So, the argument is actually coming down to were the first stars so much brighter, and was there initial mass function, to bring that phrase back again, was their initial mass function so different from what we’re used to seeing in the modern universe that it was possible to have exceedingly bright, 10 times brighter than expected galaxies within those first few hundred million years, or is there something in our understanding of how the early universe like molecular clouds fragmented and collapsed? Which of those two things –
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: – or both is where the struggle is? My personal feeling is that we don’t have a good understanding of the initial mass function of the early universe because you only had Hydrogen and Helium. And we know that the initial mass function is strongly related to the melodicity of stars. So, I’m leaning that the majority of the problem is going to be on stars were just brighter back then, and we’re still understanding that.
Fraser Cain: One of the observations that I really enjoyed from this round of press releases was the imaging of objects that looked like green pea galaxies. And these were a finding by a team of – was it Galaxy Zoo? Anyway…
Dr. Pamela Gay: It was Galaxy Zoo. Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. Found these weird galaxies that are green pea galaxies. And so, they’re mashed together. And you’re seeing the light coming, the collective light from all of the ionized gas in the galaxy. There’s so much ionized gas in the galaxy that it’s just glowing in the ultraviolet, and it appeared green in the images. It’s not that it’s actually green. And JWST was able to find examples of these galaxies early, early on in the universe. And although the wavelengths were pushed into –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Shifted.
Fraser Cain: – the infrared, –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Right.
Fraser Cain: – by all means, they matched these green pea galaxies. And so, what’s exciting about that is you get this connection. You got these things that are very close at hand, and are relatively easy to study, and you’ve got a confirmation that these things are very similar to the things that we saw at the beginning of the universe. And so, you can study the ones that are nearby.
They’re easy to get your hands on, and know that you’re looking at something that is kind of primordial. It’s like people pulling up a coelacanth from the bottom of the ocean, this primordial fish, and knowing that this thing has been around for this long. You can study an alligator, or a crocodile, and know that a version of this has been around for hundreds of millions of years. And I really enjoyed that story, and sort of what the implications were.
Dr. Pamela Gay: I’m really enjoying the fact that as we’re able to see better and better in the infrared, we’re able to see that the expansion of the universe has just taken things that are familiar in the ultraviolet, in the modern universe, and shifted them. So, in the Middle Ages, they were optical-colored. Hubble showed them to us.
And now, we’re seeing the exact same objects from early in the universe that are shifted all the way into the infrared, and this confirms to us that while so many things have completely changed, the melodicity content of the universe, the number of heavy atoms, essentially, the basic physics of how things turn on, how they form, what they look like is the same at every single epic, except for maybe that very first epic, ‘cause there was only hydrogen and helium.
Fraser Cain: Now, did we get any planetary news?
Dr. Pamela Gay: There was. So, JWST was able to confirm a test source. It had been seen as two rough transits. Previously, it was seen again by JWST, and with JWST’s abilities, they were like, “Yes, this is a planet.” And there was another world that originally, they thought maybe this isn’t a planet, because there was a double eclipse. And the thinking initially was that it was a sun-like star, and a Jupiter-like planet, and with that size of a planet, you shouldn’t be seeing both kinds of dips.
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: But then, they redid some of the star’s physics, and they were able to figure out, “No, wait. This is an object that the star is actually significantly bigger, significantly hotter, and yes, that is also a planet.” So, we’re at the finding planets, we are at the – they are starting to look at atmospheres, they’re still in the stages of eliminating stuff that they don’t see, but getting down to the stuff we’re interested in, like Carbon Dioxide is going to take a bit longer, just because it’s harder to observe, it’s deeper down in the atmospheres.
Fraser Cain: And there was another image. And this isn’t exactly planets. I guess it kind of is. But it was a picture taken by JWST of this fairly famous, newly-forming planetary system called AU Microscopii. And the star system is fairly new. And it’s relatively close, and it’s seen edge-on. But what was cool was you got a chance to see the coronagraph from JWST in operation. And so, it was blocking out the light from the star, and you could see the protoplanetary disc surrounding it.
And astronomers have already found multiple planets in this disc. And so, you’re seeing the left-over planetesimals that are all crashing into each other, and creating this rubble area around the star that is probably still causing mayhem. So, we think back to the early age of the solar system with the late heavy bombardment period, you’ve got that rough period that these planets are going through right now in this nearby star system. And it’s an amazing picture, just to see the star is gone, and then –
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: – the fainter objects around it are revealed. So, very cool.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And my favorite star – and I have to look at its license plate every time – it’s a star in Taurus L1527. And this is one that you interviewed the scientists who worked on it over on the weekly space hangout. And it’s a fan-like structure coming out from this little, tiny, dark line of a disc in the center that has a young star in the very center. And the light coming out in cones just like a flashlight beam into a dust storm allows you to see all the structure of the gas around this young solar system. And I just love the ability that we’re finding with JWST to make out the fine structure.
Fraser Cain: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pamela Gay: A bunch of new work on the southern ring nebula is showing very similar, “Okay, let’s turn on just this one neuroband filter. Okay, so we see the hot gas in the center. Now, let’s turn on this other filter. Okay, now we see all of this filigreed ring structure including planetary nebula formed through the basically exhalation of the atmosphere of a star into the surrounding space, and in the outskirts of this, you start to see faint, individual rings from when the material was getting blasted off of this young, white Dwarf.
Fraser Cain: Very cool. All right. We’re gonna have to wait another six months for the next big AAS meeting, and then I’m sure we will see another, probably even more comprehensive list of stories coming out of JWST. Thanks, Pamela!
Dr. Pamela Gay: Thank you so much! And thank you to all of our audience members who support us through patreon.com/astronomycast. This week, I would like to thank by name, Michelle Cullen, Dean McDaniel, Scott Briggs, J. AlexAnderson, Micheal Regan, Benjamin Carryer, Matt Rucker, Peter, Abraham Cottrill, Schercm, Jim McGihon, Frode… he gave me pronunciations that include a character. I don’t know what it means.
Fraser Cain: That’s not helpful!
Dr. Pamela Gay: Okay. Frode, I’m gonna figure this out. Frode Tennebo, Philip Grand, Mark Steven Rasnake, Anitusar, Brent Kreinop, Father Prax, Dwight Illk, Bruce Amazeen, Gfour184, Dustin A Ruoff, Planetar, Alex Raine, Glenn McDavid, Andrew Stephenson, Paul L Hayden, James Rodger, Sean Martz, Cemanski, The Mysterious Mark, Karthik Venkatramen, Sam Brooks and his Mom. Thank you all so much, and thank you to all of you who are putting in pronunciation guides, and if you’re a human whose name I continue to mispronounce, I’ll look up that letter that was deeply mysterious. Thank you.
Fraser Cain: All right. We’ll see you next week!
Dr. Pamela Gay: Buh-bye! AstronomyCast is a joint product of Universe Today and the Planetary Science Institute. AstronomyCast is released under a creative commons attribution license. So, love it, share it, and remix it. But please, credit it to our hosts, Frasier Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our website, AstronomyCast.com. This episode was brought to you thanks to our generous patrons on Patreon.
If you want to help keep this show going, please consider joining our community at patreon.com/astronomycast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox, and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up! This has been AstronomyCast!
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