With everything looking down, why not look up for a moment?
This is, quite seriously, one of the most gorgeous astronomical images I have ever seen. And I've seen a *lot*.
An extremely distant galaxy — we see it as it was just 330 million years after the Big Bang! — is blasting out ultraviolet radiation. That in itself isn't surprising, but the thing is, *we shouldn't be able to see it*.
How about some Monday science?
When was the first exoplanet discovered? You might read it was in 1992, but in fact the first evidence for the existence of alien worlds was found before then. Way before then.
Like, in *1917*.
I love this story.
The Universe is doing weird stuff again. If this pans out, and that looks likely, our understanding of the cosmos will have to fundamentally change. Again.
Sometimes, the most amazing photos from space are of objects close to home.
Or even *of* our home.
This is a lunar eclipse as seen from the Moon. That black disk? That's Earth. And the ring around it? Why, that's the magic.
There may be tens of BILLIONS of small (10 - 100 meter) asteroids out in the main belt past Mars, but they're too small to be seen from with our telescopes… until now. Astronomers used JWST data in a unique way to find over 130 of them!
The odds of an impact from the asteroid 2024 YR4 just went up a teeny bit. That's expected, but the good news is we're getting JWST observations of it in a few weeks! That'll help nail down its size and maybe help with an impact prediction.
