2023-09-10 Ra Castaldo Webb Telescope’s Year 1
SHOW REPLAY SHOW REPLAY TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW Guest Page Fast links to Items: Richard – Jonathan Fast links to Bios: Chandra – Holger – Ralphie – Jonathan – Georgia Support The Other Side of Midnight! The Webb Telescope’s First Year … and ASTONISHING Discoveries The James Webb Space Telescope has just celebrated its incredibly productive “first year,” lazily orbiting in its extended L-2 location … a million miles “behind” the Earth (as seen from the Sun). What has it actually found? Well, here’s a (partial …) list: 1) First Deep Field IR image: Webb’s first official telescopic observation was the most detailed, “deep” (long-range) infrared image of the Universe ever created … leading eventually tro a potentially “mind blowing” conclusion …. 2) Most distant active “supermassive black hole” 3) Webb’s first “exoplanet”: On January 11, 2023, NASA reported finding Webb’s first exoplanet, LHS 475 b, located 41 light-years away from the Earth. Webb’s transmission spectrum revealed it to be (wait for it …) an Earth-sized terrestrial world …. 4) Unprecedented IR views of Saturn 5) Equally unprecedented IR views of Jupiter 6) New, IR structural details of “asteroid belts” orbiting near-by stars 7) Earliest existence of complex “organic” molecules … in a galaxy ~12 billion light years distant But, the biggest “discovery” of all (still to be verified across Webb’s highly anticipated Second Year …) may be that the Universe itself — based, in part, on Webb’s unique first “deep field” IR image (see above), has revealed “surprisingly mature” galaxies at an “impossibly ‘young’ Universe Age”: in fact, the Universe might be TWICE as old as astronomer have been telling us for more than 20 years — not “13.8 billion years old” … but, maybe, “26.7 billion years!” Join us tonight … and expect even MORE surprises. Richard C. Hoagland Guest Page Fast links to Items: Richard – Jonathan Fast links to Bios: Chandra – Holger – Ralphie – Jonathan – Georgia TO LISTEN TO THE SHOW