Astronomy April 2022

On Christmas Day 2021, a very special and long-awaited event took place. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was carried skyward by an Ariane 5 rocket from a pad in French Guiana. In essence the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST will inaugurate a new era in space. As I write this, astronomers and followers of the launch are mostly extremely relieved, as the complex process of unfolding and deploying the telescope is nearly complete. Exciting times seem to loom on the horizon. The new telescope is on a significant journey. Rather than floating in low-Earth orbit, it will travel to the Second Langrangian Point, or L2. Parking the scope there will keep it in a stable, functional place while requiring no energy for it to move along with us…

The bridge between worlds I just read Stephen James O’Meara’s column about violet in the December 2021 issue. I am one of the two color scientists who worked with Allen Tager (the protagonist in the hunt for historical violet) on the investigation into the arts that were described. (You mention my name in the text, so thanks for that, of course.) This article really makes me feel good. Since I was younger, I used to spend almost all my free time reading astronomy and observations. Therefore, your column bridges two worlds in my head that followed distant orbits. —Eric Kirchner, Senior Color Scientist, AkzoNobel Theory vs. fact It was so refreshing to read Bob Berman’s “Alien life” (November 2021), where he challenged his fellow scientists, questioned cosmology’s most basic assumptions, and described the…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNIVERSE THIS MONTH In landscape photography, photographers must catch the light at just the right moment — or, in this case, moments. To produce the evocative colors and textures of this landscape, which shows Mars’ Gale Crater and the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, the team behind NASA’s Curiosity rover used a creative technique. First, they took two different black-and-white mosaics of the same scene at different times of day on Nov. 16, 2021 (at lower left and right). Then, they added orange to the morning picture and blue to the afternoon pictures — and green to both — and combined them to create an artistic rendition (top). The effect mimics the natural tones in a sunlit scene. Orange morning light (from 8:30 a.m. local…

A SPEEDY FEATHERWEIGHT The newfound planet GJ 367 b, located some 30 light-years away, orbits its star in less than eight hours. The rocky world is also only half the mass of Earth, making it one of the lightest known exoplanets. TIGHT-KNIT PAIR At the heart of the galaxy NGC 7727 lurk two supermassive black holes. They are the closest pair to Earth and sport the smallest separation — just 1,600 light-years — of any duo yet found. FILING TO FLYING Mission Specialist Jessica Watkins launches aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission this month. After starting at NASA as an intern, she will be the first Black woman to carry out a long-duration stay on the ISS.…

Astronomers around the world received a great gift on Dec. 25, 2021: NASA’s $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) rode safely to space on an Ariane 5 booster from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The liftoff at 7:20 a.m. EST was a milestone for the flagship telescope designed to capture light from the first galaxies and characterize alien worlds. It also marked the end of a decades-long development full of delays and cost overruns. But it was only the beginning of what NASA officials called “29 days on the edge.” That’s how long it took the telescope to reach its destination, the L2 Lagrange point, nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, where the gravity of the Sun and Earth align to keep an object’s orbital position relative to…

NEW TO THE AREA Some 40 local dwarf galaxies are moving too fast to be satellites to the Milky Way, according to data from ESA’s Gaia mission. Instead, it’s likely these galaxies just arrived in our neighborhood in the last few billion years. POCKET-SIZED LIFE A new theory for how seemingly inhospitable Venus could support life suggests that organisms may produce pockets of ammonia in the clouds. These pockets would set off a snowball effect, neutralizing the surrounding sulfuric acid so life could thrive. HUBBLE SAVED (AGAIN) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope entered safe mode for the second time in 2021 on Oct. 25, after the loss of specific data synchronization messages. The 31-year-old telescope returned to full science operations Dec. 6 when the team reactivated its final instrument. DEFINING A PLANET A new study proposes that a…