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A new paper out in Nature highlights a discovery made with the NIRCam instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): the telltale fingerprint of methane on a planet 950 trillion miles away. JWST observed the exoplanet WASP-80 b as it passed in front of and behind its host star, revealing spectra indicative of an atmosphere containing methane gas and water vapor. While water vapor has been detected in over a dozen planets to date, until recently methane – a molecule found in abundance in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune within our solar system – has remained elusive in the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets when studied with space-based spectroscopy. 

Methane, a molecule that is composed of a carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms, is an important molecule in atmospheres in the Solar System worlds and extrasolar planets. This discovery opens doors for understanding the chemical processes behind the birth the evolution of planets, and allows us to compare what we know about planets in our own solar system with exoplanets in other parts of the universe. 

This new study was made possible with the NIRCam instrument on JWST and its team of engineers, technicians and scientists who developed the camera, who were led by Marcia Rieke at the University of Arizona—making NIRCam one of the finest examples of female-led space science. NIRCam senses near infrared wavelengths longer than the human eye can see. The instrument has the extreme sensitivity in the near infrared necessary to search for the distinctive fingerprint of methane in planet atmospheres, even those that are more than 950 trillion miles away like WASP-80 b. 

UArizona Assistant Research Professor Everett Schlawin, in collaboration with the MANATEE team, modeled the atmosphere of the planet before JWST was launched to predict that methane would be detectable with NIRCam. Sure enough, the planet showed strong absorptions of light by methane in the atmosphere of the planet. Schlawin also performed one of two independent analyses to tease out the small planet signature from the vastly brighter host star to study the terminator of the planet (between its day and night) as well as the dayside (facing the star). The two independent analyses showed, to high confidence, that methane is present in this atmosphere, even though disequilibrium processes can destroy the molecule. This new detection opens the pathway to study planets below 1340 F/730 C, figuring out what they are made of and what kind of chemistry is governing their gaseous atmospheres.

The young cosmos is home to a mystifyingly large population of tempestuous galaxies with large black holes at their cores. COURTESY OF JORRYT MATTHEE. DATA FROM THE EIGER/FRESCO SURVEY

The JWST Has Spotted Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

“Everybody is talking about these little red dots,” said Xiaohui Fan, a researcher at the University of Arizona who has spent his career searching for distant objects in the early universe. Learn more

On October 17th, the GUSTO mission—led by UArizona professor Christopher Walker—passed an important milestone on its journey to its December launch: the KDP-E Review at NASA Headquarters approved the balloon telescope mission for flight. Following the NASA approval, technicians loaded the integrated gondola and telescope aboard a turboprop NASA aircraft in Texas to begin its long trip to Antarctica. Several team members, including PI Christopher Walker, will meet the telescope at McMurdo Station, where they will spend the next several weeks preparing the ballooncraft for a December launch.

This will be the culmination of a multi-year, multi-institute journey. NASA selected the GUSTO mission (the Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory) for the Explorer’s Program in 2017. Partners at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research joined forces with the University of Arizona to build the gondola and detectors necessary for this unique telescope, which marries the strengths of space observation with the proximity of earth-based operations. When it launches in December, GUSTO will fly on a Long-Duration Balloon (LDB) 120,000 feet in the air above Antarctica to study the interstellar medium—the matter between the stars—using far infrared detectors. This data will help scientists determine the life cycle of interstellar gas in our Milky Way galaxy, witness the formation and destruction of star-forming clouds, and understand the dynamics and gas flow in the vicinity of the center of our galaxy.

Join us in congratulating the GUSTO team on this landmark achievement!

Left: Steward Observatory GUSTO Mission Team- PI Chris Walker, Deputy PI Craig Kulesa. Right: Payload arriving in Antarctica.

GUSTO Balloon Mission Arrives at McMurdo Station, Antarctica!

On October 17th, the GUSTO mission—led by UArizona professor Christopher Walker—passed an important milestone on its journey to its December launch: the KDP-E Review at NASA Headquarters approved the balloon telescope mission for flight. Following the NASA approval, technicians loaded the integrated gondola and telescope aboard a turboprop NASA aircraft in Texas to begin its long trip to Antarctica. Several team members, including PI Christopher Walker, will meet the telescope at McMurdo Station, where they will spend the next several weeks preparing the ballooncraft for a December launch. 

This will be the culmination of a multi-year, multi-institute journey. NASA selected the GUSTO mission (the Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory) for the Explorer’s Program in 2017. Partners at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research joined forces with the University of Arizona to build the gondola and detectors necessary for this unique telescope, which marries the strengths of space observation with the proximity of earth-based operations.  When it launches in December, GUSTO will fly on a Long-Duration Balloon (LDB) 120,000 feet in the air above Antarctica to study the interstellar medium—the matter between the stars—using far infrared detectors. This data will help scientists determine the life cycle of interstellar gas in our Milky Way galaxy, witness the formation and destruction of star-forming clouds, and understand the dynamics and gas flow in the vicinity of the center of our galaxy.

Join us in congratulating the GUSTO team on this landmark achievement!

A quasar is a galactic object with a supermassive black hole in the center. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld, CC BY-NC-SA

Powerful black holes might grow up in bustling galactic neighborhoods

Dr. Jaclyn Champagne, our JASPER post-doc researcher in the UA Astronomy Department, is hard at work using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data to map out rapidly forming galaxy neighborhoods—protoclusters—and to understand if these cosmic cities are the birthplace of extraordinarily luminous quasars. The wide-field slitless spectrograph aboard JWST has revolutionized the search for these galactic neighborhoods in the early universe, where astronomers are observing “colliding galaxies, growing black holes and great swarms of gas that will eventually become the next generation of stars.” Learn about Jackie’s work in her latest article for The Conversation, here.

The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. The LBTI instrument combines infrared light from both 8.4-meter mirrors to image planets and disks around young and nearby stars.

Scientists have long thought that spiral arms in protoplanetary disks could be caused by nascent planets, yet none had been detected until now.

"Our study puts forward a solid piece of evidence that these spiral arms are caused by giant planets," said Kevin Wagner, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the UArizona Steward Observatory. Learn more

https://news.arizona.edu/story/astronomers-discover-elusive-planet-responsible-spiral-arms-around-its-star?utm_source=uanow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=
The GUSTO Team with the payload.

GUSTO Balloon Observatory Mission Ships Out in Preparation for Antarctic Launch

On July 3, the integrated gondola and payload for NASA’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) was shipped from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, on a long route to Antarctica.
GUSTO is an observatory that will fly on a Long-Duration Balloon (LDB) to around 120,000 feet in the air to study the interstellar medium — the matter between the stars — using far infrared detectors. This mission represents a joint effort between NASA, the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins APL.
The gondola carrying the payload was designed and built at APL by a team of Space Exploration Sector (SES) and Research and Exploratory Development Department (REDD) staff members. Kieran Hegarty, the GUSTO program manager from SES, noted that the seven-year-old mission was long in coming, after the pandemic and technical issues delayed the launch by several years.
Artist's rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope observing in space.

'Cosmic lens' reveals distant galaxies and helps astronomers better understand dark matter

The Fishhook. The Thin One. These are just two of several striking-looking targets revealed by a cluster of galaxies so massive that it acts as a gravitational lens, literally bending light around it and revealing distant and dusty objects too faint and too distant to be seen otherwise.

A new image of this galaxy cluster, known as El Gordo (Spanish for The Big One), taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, shows a variety of unusual, distorted galaxies – 62 in all – behind the cluster that were only hinted at in previous Hubble Space Telescope images.

El Gordo is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old, according to Brenda Frye, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and lead author of one of four papers published about the cluster in The Astrophysical Journal.

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A New thin-lensed telescope design could far surpass James Webb - Goodbye Mirrors, Hello Diffractive Lenses. Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will likely need more powerful telescopes than exist today. Learn more

The nearby supernova SN 2023ixf (the bright, bluish burst of light at lower left), as seen nestled in the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy by the Gemini North telescope. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image Processing: J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Rodriguez (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)/(CC BY 4.0)

Nearby Supernova Gives Unique View of a Dying Star's Last Days

Steward Observatory Astronomers Griffin Hosseinzadeh and Azalee Bostroem are piecing together the final moments of supernova 2023ixf and learning more about it than any other in recent history. “It’s telling us how stars lose mass, which has a big influence on how galaxies evolve,” says Azalee Bostroem.

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