you can read more about this in our press release from NASA here: you can read more at nasa's site here: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-redefines-dividing-line-between-planets-stars/
or read the paper, published in ApJ Letters this morning, here: arxiv.org/abs/2604.09785
Astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to directly image 29 Cygni b, which weighs 15 times Jupiter. They found evidence for heavy chemical elements like carbon and oxygen, which strongly suggests it formed like a planet by accretion within a protoplanetary disk, and not like a star through fragmentation. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was used in its coronagraphic mode, in which a wedge (indicated by the blue box) is used to block the light of the host star (labeled A and marked with a star symbol) to reveal the planet. This image combines light from three filters between 4 and 5 microns. The planet is brightest in the blue filter, then green, then red, so it appears as an off-white dot in the color composite. If carbon dioxide weren’t present, the planet would appear noticeably redder. In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to 4.6 micron light.
🔭🪐 my team took this image of 29 Cygni b, a super giant planet 130 light years from us, with JWST. we found some interesting clues that suggest that this planet (~15x the mass of Jupiter) accreted more than 100 times the mass of the Earth in carbon- and oxygen-rich material during its formation
Super excited for @balmer.bsky.social to be joining us this fall! Welcome to the @heisingsimonsfdn.bsky.social 51 peg b family!
Title text: "An old astronomer trick for distinguishing the Sun from other stars is to take multiple photos a few minutes apart and overlay them, making the Sun stand out due to its high proper motion."
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3219#Transcript
its joever
🤠 back to protoplanets. somehow we return to our roots
thank you!
give me enough time in the control room and ill dig them the dark hole myself
waahouu!!
thanks! you too :]
got one
...!!! this would have been perfect to know for a brown dwarf proposal i submitted, that was accepted! we got time for direct imaging in the same filters instead... unlikely, but maybe there's a way to work together?
In case you’re just waking up, the U.S. has teamed up with Israel overnight to start an illegal war of regime change, apparently on a presidential whim with no involvement of Congress, and they are already committing horrific atrocities.
Suleiman Baraka in Gaza says this about his work: “I decided to fight the killing of the children by educating the children.... astronomy “is also a window for breathing freedom that we were denied for our whole life".
I think this is the reason the world needs it. All of us need his example.
needs a catchy limerick for memorization. periapsis in abstract, perihelion for the Sun, perigee for the Earth, and periastron for binary stars (inherited by exoplanets, which are really just very small binary stars), lil omega, a.o.p., the forgotten one, etc
that's an easy fix. just plot the upper 1 sigma uncertainty on argument of periastron on the abscissa, and the lower 1 sigma uncertainty on the tess input catalog stellar effective temperature on the ordinate. basically as informative as m or r vs P imo
we found the same with nircam last year! two independent instruments showing strong CO2 features and the power of JWST at high contrasts
woohoo a high throughput coronagraph in space 😀
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-p...
i think i heard so!
ive liked my lenovo steam deck equivalent so far, runs steamos/linux
One legitimate way to be frustrated with graduate education is to think about the fact that grad programs continue to produce PhDs despite there being few job opportunities because those programs need the cheap labor of graduate students. But you need to be able to see yourself as a worker.
2+7= _ I caNnot aNswer this qwestion, as it is agaiNst My reLigious principles. ٠١٨٨ IT'S WORTH A SHOT. aMI, 7 january 1986 NAITION
Has this been posted yet
"Why is there grade inflation? Why do our courses lack rigor?'
"Also we will immediately throw any graduate student TA or instructor who upsets an influential constituency under the bus, no matter how obviously manufactured their outrage is." 🤷♂️
the classic sickness after stressful deadlines has impeeded halloween fun this year :(
after this proposal cycle, i think i can argue anything
the closest r1 physics dept to my hometown is hiring: 😀😀😀
... in cm theory: 🫥🫥🫥
a scientist presenting in front of a slide show, which displays a diagram of variability in the brightness of a planet
my favorite weatherman on channel 0136 @evertnasedkin.bsky.social
