It’s always a fun day for the space nerds when a NASA team has new images to share from the James Webb Space Telescope. Today’s pair has brains on the brain, with a look at the fittingly named Exposed Cranium Nebula. More officially, this cloud of space dust and debris is known as Nebula PMR 1. The images shared today may capture a moment in the final stages of a star, as well as giving hints as to how the nebula got its brain-like shape.
“The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution — an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases,” NASA’s blog post reads. The dark line that runs vertically through the nebula, giving it the cranial appearance, could be the result of “an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions.” Both Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) were used to document the nebula.
A supermassive black hole that’s 10 million times the mass of the Sun is hurtling through space, leaving a trail of gas that’s spawning newborn stars in its wake. Astronomers have long theorized about runaway black holes, but none have been observed until now.
The Webb space telescope confirmed the first runaway black hole, which broke away from its home galaxy for a speedy life on the run. The black hole is one of the fastest-moving objects observed in the cosmos, traveling at a speed of 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). At that speed, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes, according to NASA.
Astronomers first observed a bright streak of glowing gas in 2023 using the Hubble Space Telescope, and follow-up observations with Webb confirmed it as a trail left behind by a runaway black hole. The discovery is detailed in a new study available on the pre-print server arXiv.
On the run
As it travels through space, the escaped black hole is plowing into gas ahead of it to create a massive bow shock. As the gas is heated from the motion of the black hole, it triggers the birth of new stars. The trail of newborn stars extends for 200,000 light-years behind the black hole, according to the study.
Black holes are normally housed at the center of their home galaxies. This one, however, was found approximately 230,000 light-years away from its galaxy. It must have been moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grip of its host.
So, how did the black hole make a run for it? The astronomers behind the new study believe it may have been the result of two galaxies merging together, providing a forceful kick that sent the black hole careening across the cosmos. Another possible scenario is that one of the two galaxies that merged together had a pair of binary black holes. When three black holes merge, the system becomes unstable, thereby forcing one of them out into space.
“It boggles the mind!” Pieter van Dokkum, a researcher at Yale University and lead author of the new study, told Space.com. “The forces that are needed to dislodge such a massive black hole from its home are enormous. And yet, it was predicted that such escapes should occur!”
For scientists, the urgent problem with phosphine—a molecule famously touted as a potential sign of life—isn’t so much about where it came from, but why it’s not where we think it should be. After a decade of searching, a long-awaited result has confirmed that our astronomical models aren’t a total bust. At least, for now.
In a Science paper published today, astronomers report the first-ever detection of strong phosphine signatures on a brown dwarf—a type of planet-star hybrid more massive than planets like Jupiter but not quite big enough to sustain the hydrogen fusion that powers stars. Prominent chemical models had long predicted that cosmic entities with gassy atmospheres would be rich in phosphine, but years of searching had turned up nearly nothing. The findings thus give closure to a problem that had plagued astronomers for at least a decade.
Just as importantly, the finding carries important implications for astrobiology. The phosphine detected on this brown dwarf, named Wolf 1130C, almost certainly formed through natural, abiotic processes. The challenge now is figuring out how an object like this could generate so much of it without life. Until researchers can explain that, any detection of phosphine—whether on a gas giant or a rocky planet like Venus—can’t be taken as a reliable sign of biology.
“The community has been waiting for this,” said Sara Seager, an MIT astrophysicist not involved in the new work. Seager co-authored a seminal paper from 2020 on the detection of phosphine on Venus. On Earth, phosphine mainly exists as the byproduct of anaerobic life, or creatures that thrive without oxygen. Because Venus’s chemical environment isn’t conducive to the natural formation of phosphine, the 2020 paper left astronomers wondering if the phosphine could have come from a life source—a biosignature.
“It is very refreshing—finally!” Nathalie Cabrol, research director at the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center, added. Cabrol, also uninvolved in the new study, told Gizmodo in a video call that the paper presents “clear, plain” data of phosphine on the brown dwarf—just as models predicted.
A wild phosphine chase
Had the results come ten years ago, it wouldn’t have been this big of a deal, Adam Burgasser, study lead author and an astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, told Gizmodo. Chemical models had long supported the natural presence of phosphine on brown dwarfs or exoplanets with gassy atmospheres. That Jupiter and Saturn have phosphine-rich atmospheres also contributed to this assumption.
But after a decade of finding zero (or rather, several contested) signs of phosphine where models expected it to be, astronomers started to get rather skittish, explained Burgasser. In fact, astronomers had started to seriously consider substantially revising major models to account for the lack of phosphine.
“It’s been a real weird problem, because it’s just this one molecule that seems to be a little bit out of sync,” Burgasser said. “So, it’s actually a surprise that we have now finally detected it—in fact, detected it in abundance in this one particular brown dwarf.”
A Webb search
Wolf 1130C is located around 54.1 light-years from Earth. The team chose this object for its slightly unusual composition, low metallicity, and comparatively low surface temperature. The idea was to take a slightly different approach, since previous surveys had already targeted brown dwarfs with the right temperature or composition, yet astronomers hadn’t “seen the level of phosphine that we would expect,” Burgasser explained.
Their hunch turned out to be correct. While studying spectral data from the James Webb Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the team noticed a distinct check mark in their plot—a shape characteristic of phosphine signatures. But the researchers swallowed their excitement to double- and triple-check their work.
Comparison of JWST infrared spectral observations of Wolf 1130C (light blue line) and a typical brown dwarf (grey line). The detection of phosphine is highlighted in the zoomed-in panel at right, which compares the spectrum of Wolf 1130C (light blue line) to that of pure phosphine (green line). Credit: Adam Burgasser/UCSD
“We were like, ‘We have to make sure this is absolutely correct,’” Burgasser recalled. Fortunately, the team included a computational modeling expert who ran week-long simulations of the dwarf’s atmosphere, along with a scientist whose career had revolved around phosphine.
“A combination of all these things—plus the analysis we did to [describe] the abundances—made us realize that we had a very obvious and solid detection,” Burgasser said.
No aliens here
Again, the detection doesn’t represent a biosignature, which Burgasser, Seager, and Cabrol all emphasized. That has to do with an often glossed-over aspect of finding signs of alien life, Cabrol said. No molecule by itself is necessarily a biosignature; rather, we’re looking for the “co-evolution of life and its environment,” she said. In other words, a compound qualifies as a biosignature only if the surrounding environment suggests it couldn’t have formed through non-biological chemistry alone.
Checking such environmental contexts would be easier for places like Venus, which is close enough for us to plan missions, Cabrol explained. “We don’t have this luxury with exoplanets. When you don’t know the environment…you cannot claim that something is a biosignature unless something is being replenished in a way that nature alone cannot explain.”
For brown dwarfs, phosphine is not a biosignature. These stellar bodies are hot and hydrogen-rich, which is conducive to the presence of phosphine, Seager said.
“Chemically, there’s no life involved in that,” Burgasser added.
Homework from the universe
That said, the team isn’t completely certain how so much phosphine ended up on Wolf 1130C, although they do explore some options. It could be due to the brown dwarf’s low metallicity, or the local environment could have been conducive to the accumulation of phosphine on Wolf 1130C. Overall, the researchers aren’t sure.
At the same time, “the inability of models to consistently explain all these sources indicates an incomplete understanding of phosphorus chemistry in low-temperature atmospheres,” the paper noted.
It’s as if nature came in and said, “Yeah, here’s more homework, a harder test question for you,” Burgasser joked. “We don’t even understand the natural chemistry for phosphorus—until we get that right, we can’t really rely on phosphine as a viable biosignature,” he added.
The obvious next step would be to look for other objects with similar supplies of phosphine, which could help fill in the gaps that remain. Of course, it’s entirely possible that future discoveries may throw models into even further confusion. Either way, the findings mark a new chapter in our understanding of the cosmos.
“But the process that will be leading to that day is beautiful in itself,” Cabrol said, “because it’s the progress of human knowledge.”
NASA’s powerful James Webb Space telescope has revealed a colorful spread of stars and cosmic dust in the Milky Way’s most active star-forming region.
The telescope was studying Sagittarius B2, a massive molecular cloud, NASA said in a news release. The region is just a few hundred light-years from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and is densely packed with stars, star-forming clouds and complex magnetic fields. Sagittarius B holds only 10% of the galactic center’s gas, but produces 50% of its stars.
The Webb telescope’s instruments can examine the infrared light that passes through the region to study what forms there.
An image taken by the Webb Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument shows warm dust and gas glowing in Sagittarius B2, with stars appearing as blue pinpoints and a red area in the center showing the most active part of the region.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
One image from the Mid-Infrared Instrument shows an area known as Sagittarius B2 North, which is one of the most molecularly rich regions known to humans, NASA said. The images taken with Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument show gas and dust in the region in “unprecedented detail,” NASA said. In this image, stars appear only as blue pinpoints through the thick clouds.
When using the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, astronomers were able to see colorful stars illuminating bright clouds of gas and dust. The astronomers will continue to study these stars to learn more about their size and age, which will inform research into the process of star formation in Sagittarius B2.
An image taken with the Webb Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera shows stars, gas and cosmic dust in Sagittarius B2.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The new images still leave some questions for astronomers. Areas of Sagittarius B2 that look dark and empty are actually “so dense with gas and dust that even Webb cannot see through them,” NASA said. Those clouds of gas and dust will eventually become future stars, NASA said. The clouds also serve as a sort of “cocoon” for young stars.
Researchers also hope the Webb telescope’s instruments can help them learn why star formation in the center of the Milky Way is so low.
“Humans have been studying the stars for thousands of years, and there is still a lot to understand,” said Nazar Budaiev, a graduate student at the University of Florida and the co-principal investigator of the study. “For everything new Webb is showing us, there are also new mysteries to explore, and it’s exciting to be a part of that ongoing discovery.”
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
Scientists are observing an Earth-like exoplanet that may contain water using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the space agency said in a news release.
The exoplanet, known as TRAPPIST-1 e, orbits the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. The system was discovered in 2017. There are seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the star, but planet e is the only one that is at a distance where water on the surface is “theoretically possible,” NASA said. However, astronomers still need to determine if the planet has an atmosphere.
To look for an atmosphere, NASA scientists directed the Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument at the TRAPPIST-1 system as planet e passed in front of the star. If the planet has an atmosphere, the starlight that passes through it will be partially absorbed. That will create dips in the light spectrum that reaches the spectrograph. Those dips will allow scientists to determine if the planet has an atmosphere and what chemicals it might be made of.
Scientists are also studying the light spectrum of another exoplanet in the system called TRAPPIST-1 b. Researchers have determined that planet has no atmosphere, NASA said, so comparing its output to that of TRAPPIST-1 e allows for a fuller picture of the potential atmosphere on that planet.
An artist’s rendering of TRAPPIST-1, with TRAPPIST-1 depicted in the lower right.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
“Webb’s infrared instruments are giving us more detail than we’ve ever had access to before, and the initial four observations we’ve been able to make of planet e are showing us what we will have to work with when the rest of the information comes in,” said Néstor Espinoza of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, a principal investigator on the research team. Espinoza and the research team recently published two scientificpapers outlining their initial results.
Researchers “feel confident” that TRAPPIST-1 e does not have a primary atmosphere. A primary atmosphere would be made of hydrogen and helium that would have been present when the planet was formed. But the star the planet orbits is “very active,” with “frequent flares,” NASA said, which create stellar radiation that may have “stripped off” that primary atmosphere. However, TRAPPIST-1 e may have built up a “heavier secondary atmosphere.” Many planets, including Earth, have done this, NASA said. Further research with the Webb telescope and its instruments will determine the types of atmosphere and its makeup.
There are also many possibilities for water on the planet. There may be none at all, NASA said. TRAPPIST-1 e might also contain an ocean or wide swath of water. One side of the planet is always in darkness, so there may also be ice, NASA said. If there is liquid water on the planet, the NASA researchers say there would also be a greenhouse effect, where gases like carbon dioxide keep the atmosphere stable and warm the planet.
“We are really still in the early stages of learning what kind of amazing science we can do with Webb. It’s incredible to measure the details of starlight around Earth-sized planets 40 light-years away and learn what it might be like there, if life could be possible there,” said Ana Glidden, a post-doctoral researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, who led the research on possible atmospheres for planet e, in NASA’s news release. “We’re in a new age of exploration that’s very exciting to be a part of,” she said.
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
A preprint submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters for peer review on Monday, August 25, describes the first results from JWST’s survey of 3I/ATLAS.
A team of astronomers observed the comet with the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectroscopic (NIRSpec) instrument to measure the composition of its coma—the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds its nucleus—and determine what drives its activity. Their surprising findings bring 3I/ATLAS’s origin into clearer focus, helping astronomers retrace the comet’s long journey to our solar system.
3I/ATLAS, detected by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope on July 1, is only the third interstellar object ever discovered. These celestial bodies hail from star systems beyond our own. Studying them offers a glimpse of the conditions and processes that shaped these distant systems. Over the past two months, researchers have already uncovered unprecedented details about this latest cosmic visitor.
JWST spies unusual characteristics
Now, JWST has revealed even more of 3I/ATLAS’s distinctive features. Most comets have comas dominated by water, but this one is chock-full of carbon dioxide, according to the study. In fact, the researchers found that its ratio of carbon dioxide to water is among the highest ever observed in any comet. This may indicate that 3I/ATLAS has a nucleus that’s intrinsically rich in carbon dioxide, suggesting it formed in an environment with higher levels of radiation than our solar system.
Alternatively, the carbon dioxide-dominated coma may indicate that 3I/ATLAS formed near the CO2 ice line within the protoplanetary disk that surrounded its parent star, according to the researchers. This is the distance from a young star where the temperature drops low enough for carbon dioxide gas to freeze into ice. What’s more, the lack of water in the coma points to unusual surface properties—or perhaps an insulating crust—that may prevent heat from penetrating the comet’s icy core.
A comet unlike any other
These new findings suggest the comet formed under conditions far different from those in our corner of the galaxy, adding to a growing list of traits that make it unlike any seen before. Prior to this JWST survey, astronomers found evidence to suggest 3I/ATLAS is the oldest interstellar comet ever discovered—potentially older than our solar system. This, coupled with its trajectory, suggests it originated from a relatively old, low-metallicity star system in the Milky Way’s “thick disk”—the part of the galaxy that contains 10% of its total stellar mass.
Astronomers have put forth a wealth of astonishing new information about 3I/ATLAS since its discovery, but this is only the beginning. Experts expect this comet to remain observable through mid-2026, providing ample research opportunities. The more information scientists gather on this interstellar object, the closer they’ll get to unraveling the secrets of its origin.
New observations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot captured by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the 190-year-old storm wiggles like gelatin and shape-shifts like a squeezed stress ball.Related video above: Space Station captures view of colossal Hurricane MiltonThe unexpected observations, which Hubble made over 90 days from December to March, show that the Great Red Spot isn’t as stable as it appears, according to astronomers.The Great Red Spot, or GRS, is an anticyclone, or a large circulation of winds in Jupiter’s atmosphere that rotates around a central area of high pressure along the planet’s southern midlatitude cloud belt. And the long-lived storm is so large — the biggest in the solar system — that Earth could fit inside it.Although storms are generally considered unstable, the Great Red Spot has persisted for nearly two centuries. The observed changes in the storm appear related to its motion and size.A time-lapse of the images shows the vortex “jiggling” like gelatin and expanding and contracting over time.Researchers described the observation in an analysis published in The Planetary Science Journal and presented Wednesday at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in Boise, Idaho.“While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate as well. As far as we know, it’s not been identified before,” said lead study author Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “This is really the first time we’ve had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS,” Simon said. “With Hubble’s high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected.”A shifting extraterrestrial stormAstronomers have observed the iconic crimson feature for at least 150 years, and sometimes, the observations result in surprises, including the latest revelation that the storm’s oval shape can change dimensions and look skinnier or fatter at times.Recently, a separate team of astronomers peered into the heart of the Great Red Spot using the James Webb Space Telescope to capture new details in infrared light. The Hubble observations were made in visible and ultraviolet light.The study, published Sept. 27 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, revealed that the Great Red Spot is cold in the center, which causes ammonia and water to condense inside the vortex and create thick clouds. The research team also detected the gas phosphine within the storm, which could play “a role in generating those mysterious” red colors that make the Great Red Spot so iconic, said study co-author Leigh Fletcher, a professor of planetary science at the U.K.’s University of Leicester, in a statement.NASA scientists use Hubble’s sharp eye to track the storm’s behavior once a year through the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy, or OPAL, program, which Simon leads. Scientists use this program to observe the outer planets in our solar system and watch how they change over time.But the new observations were made separately through a program dedicated to studying the Great Red Spot in more detail by watching how the storm changed over a matter of months rather than a singular, yearly snapshot.“To the untrained eye, Jupiter’s striped clouds and famous red storm might appear to be static, stable, and long-lived over many years,” Fletcher said. “But closer inspection shows incredible variability, with chaotic weather patterns just as complex as anything we have here on Earth. Planetary scientists have been striving for years to see patterns in this variation, anything that might give us a handle on the physics underpinning this complex system.”Fletcher was not involved in the new study.The insights gathered from the program’s observations of the largest storms in our solar system can help scientists understand what weather may be like on exoplanets orbiting other stars. That knowledge can broaden their understanding of meteorological processes beyond ones we experience on Earth.Simon’s team used Hubble’s high-resolution images to take a detailed look at the size, shape and color changes of the Great Red Spot.“When we look closely, we see a lot of things are changing from day to day,” Simon said.The changes included a brightening of the storm’s core when the Great Red Spot is at its largest size as it oscillates.“As it accelerates and decelerates, the GRS is pushing against the windy jet streams to the north and south of it,” said study co-author Mike Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. “It’s similar to a sandwich where the slices of bread are forced to bulge out when there’s too much filling in the middle.”On Neptune, dark spots can drift across the planet since no strong jet streams are holding them in place, Wong said, while the Great Red Spot is trapped between jet streams at a southern latitude on Jupiter.A shrinking spotAstronomers have noticed the Great Red Spot shrinking since the OPAL program began a decade ago and predict that it will continue to shrink until it reaches a stable, less-elongated shape, which could reduce the wobble.“Right now it’s over-filling its latitude band relative to the wind field. Once it shrinks inside that band the winds will really be holding it in place,” Simon said.The new Hubble study fills in more pieces of the puzzle about the Great Red Spot, Fletcher said. While scientists have known that the westward drift of the storm has an unexplained 90-day oscillation, the accelerating and decelerating pattern doesn’t seem to change although the storm is shrinking, he said.“By watching the GRS over a few months, Hubble has shown that the anticyclone itself is changing its shape along with this oscillation,” Fletcher said. “The shape change is important, as it may be affecting how the edge of the vortex interacts with other passing storms. Besides the gorgeous Hubble imagery, this study shows the power of observing atmospheric systems over long periods of time. You need that sort of monitoring to spot these patterns, and it’s clear that the longer you watch, the more structure you see in the chaotic weather.”
New observations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot captured by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the 190-year-old storm wiggles like gelatin and shape-shifts like a squeezed stress ball.
Related video above: Space Station captures view of colossal Hurricane Milton
The unexpected observations, which Hubble made over 90 days from December to March, show that the Great Red Spot isn’t as stable as it appears, according to astronomers.
The Great Red Spot, or GRS, is an anticyclone, or a large circulation of winds in Jupiter’s atmosphere that rotates around a central area of high pressure along the planet’s southern midlatitude cloud belt. And the long-lived storm is so large — the biggest in the solar system — that Earth could fit inside it.
Although storms are generally considered unstable, the Great Red Spot has persisted for nearly two centuries. The observed changes in the storm appear related to its motion and size.
A time-lapse of the images shows the vortex “jiggling” like gelatin and expanding and contracting over time.
“While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate as well. As far as we know, it’s not been identified before,” said lead study author Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“This is really the first time we’ve had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS,” Simon said. “With Hubble’s high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected.”
NASA/ESA/STScI/Amy Simon via CNN Newsource
A shifting extraterrestrial storm
Astronomers have observed the iconic crimson feature for at least 150 years, and sometimes, the observations result in surprises, including the latest revelation that the storm’s oval shape can change dimensions and look skinnier or fatter at times.
Recently, a separate team of astronomers peered into the heart of the Great Red Spot using the James Webb Space Telescope to capture new details in infrared light. The Hubble observations were made in visible and ultraviolet light.
The study, published Sept. 27 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, revealed that the Great Red Spot is cold in the center, which causes ammonia and water to condense inside the vortex and create thick clouds. The research team also detected the gas phosphine within the storm, which could play “a role in generating those mysterious” red colors that make the Great Red Spot so iconic, said study co-author Leigh Fletcher, a professor of planetary science at the U.K.’s University of Leicester, in a statement.
NASA scientists use Hubble’s sharp eye to track the storm’s behavior once a year through the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy, or OPAL, program, which Simon leads. Scientists use this program to observe the outer planets in our solar system and watch how they change over time.
But the new observations were made separately through a program dedicated to studying the Great Red Spot in more detail by watching how the storm changed over a matter of months rather than a singular, yearly snapshot.
“To the untrained eye, Jupiter’s striped clouds and famous red storm might appear to be static, stable, and long-lived over many years,” Fletcher said. “But closer inspection shows incredible variability, with chaotic weather patterns just as complex as anything we have here on Earth. Planetary scientists have been striving for years to see patterns in this variation, anything that might give us a handle on the physics underpinning this complex system.”
Fletcher was not involved in the new study.
The insights gathered from the program’s observations of the largest storms in our solar system can help scientists understand what weather may be like on exoplanets orbiting other stars. That knowledge can broaden their understanding of meteorological processes beyond ones we experience on Earth.
Simon’s team used Hubble’s high-resolution images to take a detailed look at the size, shape and color changes of the Great Red Spot.
“When we look closely, we see a lot of things are changing from day to day,” Simon said.
The changes included a brightening of the storm’s core when the Great Red Spot is at its largest size as it oscillates.
“As it accelerates and decelerates, the GRS is pushing against the windy jet streams to the north and south of it,” said study co-author Mike Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. “It’s similar to a sandwich where the slices of bread are forced to bulge out when there’s too much filling in the middle.”
On Neptune, dark spots can drift across the planet since no strong jet streams are holding them in place, Wong said, while the Great Red Spot is trapped between jet streams at a southern latitude on Jupiter.
NASA/ESA/Amy Simon via CNN Newsource
A shrinking spot
Astronomers have noticed the Great Red Spot shrinking since the OPAL program began a decade ago and predict that it will continue to shrink until it reaches a stable, less-elongated shape, which could reduce the wobble.
“Right now it’s over-filling its latitude band relative to the wind field. Once it shrinks inside that band the winds will really be holding it in place,” Simon said.
The new Hubble study fills in more pieces of the puzzle about the Great Red Spot, Fletcher said. While scientists have known that the westward drift of the storm has an unexplained 90-day oscillation, the accelerating and decelerating pattern doesn’t seem to change although the storm is shrinking, he said.
“By watching the GRS over a few months, Hubble has shown that the anticyclone itself is changing its shape along with this oscillation,” Fletcher said. “The shape change is important, as it may be affecting how the edge of the vortex interacts with other passing storms. Besides the gorgeous Hubble imagery, this study shows the power of observing atmospheric systems over long periods of time. You need that sort of monitoring to spot these patterns, and it’s clear that the longer you watch, the more structure you see in the chaotic weather.”
A “treasure trove” of stunning new images showing 19 spiral galaxies have been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the European Space Agency said on Monday. The images reveal “stars, gas, and dust on the smallest scales ever observed beyond our own galaxy,” the Milky Way, the agency said.
According to the agency, researchers are analyzing the new images to find out how these galaxies originated. NASA says they were taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, and show off millions of stars that “sparkle in blue tones.” They also reveal “glowing dust,” and stars that are still developing, NASA said.
Some of the “newest, most massive stars in the galaxies,” can be found in the images, said Erik Rosolowsky, a physics professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. PHANGS researchers have also released what NASA says is the largest catalog ever of roughly 100,000 star clusters, a list that Rosolowsky says allows for analysis “vastly larger than anything our team could possibly handle.”
But that isn’t all. Researchers said the galaxy pictures also show off “large, spherical shells” that were possibly created by exploding stars, as well as supermassive black holes, which can be seen as galaxy cores with pink and red spikes.
Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at Baltimore, Maryland’s Space Telescope Science Institute, said the galaxy images are “extraordinary.”
“They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades,” Lee said. “Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”
See the 19 new images of spiral galaxies below.
Spiral galaxy IC 5332
Face-on spiral galaxy, IC 5332, was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and shows dust glowing in infrared light. IC 5332 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), Rupali Chandar (UToledo), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 628
Webb’s image of spiral galaxy NGC 628 shows it’s densely populated and anchored by its central region, which has a light blue haze. Within its core are older stars, represented by blue lights. NGC 628 is 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 1087
This image of NGC 1087 shows so much light that the galaxy’s arms “look muddled,” James Webb researchers said. NGC 1087 is 80 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), Rupali Chandar (UToledo), PHANGS Team
NGC 1300
NGC 1300’s center is highlighted by a bright white point, surrounded by a yellow circle, and according to James Webb researchers, is “tiny compared to the rest of the galaxy.” NGC 1300 is 69 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
NGC 1365
NGC 1365’s core covers roughly an eighth of the entire image, with the central region looking “like an angled, smashed oval” with six light white diffraction spikes, James Webb researchers said. NGC 1365 is 56 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
NGC 1385
James Webb researchers say this image shows NGC 1385 as a “messy” galaxy with a difficult-to-distinguish spiral shape. NGC 1385 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy 1433
The central core of Spiral Galaxy 1433 takes up roughly a fifth of this James Webb image, researchers said, and a blue haze of stars make up a “large bar structure.” NGC 1433 is 46 million light-years away in the constellation Horologium.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 1512
Along with the spiral galaxy, this James Webb image also shows “two larger foreground stars with at least six different diffraction spikes,” researchers said. NGC 1512 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Horologium.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 1566
Researchers say the “densely populated” spiral galaxy NGC 1566 features two prominent arms as well as “innumerable bright blue pinpoints of light.” The galaxy is 60 million light-years away in the constellation Dorado.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), Rupali Chandar (UToledo), Daniela Calzetti (UMass), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 1672
This galaxy’s spiral shape is not as apparent in this James Webb image, researchers said, but NGC 1672 is acnhored by its center and features “two spiny orange” arms that rotate clockwise. NGC 1672 is 60 million light-years away in the constellation Dorado.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 2835
The dense spiral galaxy NGC 2835 has a central region “immediately engulfed in the orange spiral arms,” James Webb researchers said, and was seen with a “blue glow of stars” that spread outward from its core. The pink and blue lights toward the bottom of the image are likely background galaxies. NGC 2835 is 35 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 3351
This image of NGC 3351 is just a still, but James Webb researchers say the spiral arms that form a roughly circular shape around it make it appear “as if there’s movement.” NGC 3351 is 33 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 3627
The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 features two spiny arms and was captured by the James Webb telescope with stars seen “scattered across the packed scene.” NGC 3627 is 36 million light-years away in the constellation Leo.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 4254
This James Webb scene of a “densely populated” galaxy shows NGC 4254 with counterclockwise spiny arms and lots of stars scattered across the galaxy. NGC 4254 is 50 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 4303
The spiral galaxy NGC 4303’s central region is seen about midway down in this image, and clusters of blue stars can be seen throughout. NGC 4303 is 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
NASA, ESA, CSA, ESO, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 4321
This spiral galaxy is shaped like a “smashed circle,” according to James Webb researchers, and features a prominent spiral arm across the bottom of the image. NGC 4321 is 55 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 4535
NGC 4535 was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope as having a small central region with a light orange haze and “filaments of flowing dust” crossing into its spirals, according to James Webb researchers. The galaxy is 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 5068
NGC 5068 is a spiral galaxy, although its shape is hard to register with the image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Some of the lighter red areas “look like smoke drifting up,” researchers said. NGC 5068 is 20 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Spiral galaxy NGC 7496
This spiral galaxy captured by the James Webb Space Telescope reveals the galaxy’s core is small compared to the rest of the galaxy, with the central region starting “as a bright white dot that melts into bright oranges,” according to researchers. NGC 7496 is 24 million light-years away in the constellation Grus.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
The James Webb telescope captured another spectacular image of space, but this one stood out – because there appeared to be a mysterious question mark shape floating among the stars. The image quickly went viral this week, with social media users questioning if it is a sign from aliens. So, what is the question mark?
Matt Caplan, an assistant physics professor at Illinois State University who has a doctorate in the subject, told CBS News seeing a recognizable shape in space is not uncommon. “You might be surprised how often things in space look like recognizable shapes. There are only so many simple shapes, and our brains are pretty good at pattern recognition, even when the pattern is meaningless,” he said via email.
The tendency of the brain to perceive a pattern is called pareidolia, he said. “It’s the same reason you’ll ‘see’ all sorts of fun things when you look at clouds, or ‘hear’ strange lyrics when you listen to a song backwards,” he said. “The lower the resolution and the fuzzier the stimulus, the more the human brain tends to fill in.”
While the shape looks like a question mark to the human brain, it isn’t actually one.
Space Telescope Science Institute
So, our brains are interpreting the shape as a question mark. One theory as to why a question mark shape would appear in space is that the telescope captured galaxies merging, which is another common occurrence, Caplan said.
As many as 10% to 25% of galaxies may be merging together at any given time, he said.
“Many people think of galaxies like these little islands in space that don’t move, but nothing in the universe can be pinned down,” he said. “Stars move as they orbit the galaxy, and the galaxy – being made of gas and stars – moves whatever direction the gravity of nearby galaxies pulls it. The same is true of our sun and Milky Way, for the record.”
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of a tightly bound pair of actively forming stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in near-infrared light.
Space Telescope Science Institute
Galaxies fling stars and gas into tidal tails when they merge together. Tidal tails are long streams of stars that can look curved. So, the curved shape that made the question mark could be a tidal tail.
The image taken by the telescope, released last month, shows Herbig-Haro 46/47, which is a star forming cloud, Caplan explained. On the telescope, stars look like objects with six points. That’s why the question mark is likely not just another star – it doesn’t look like the rest.
Macarena Garcia Marin, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, told CBS News she believes a galaxy merger is the most likely explanation. “Looking at the image in detail you can see two bright spots that could be the nuclei of the galaxies and the rest of the structure would be the tidal tails result of the interaction process. Additional data will be needed to further understand the nature of the structure,” Marin told CBS News via email.
Caplan said the photo is the highest resolution image of HH 46/47 to date and can teach scientists more about the star forming cloud. “About the question mark? That’s just an amusing curiosity. This entire story is the astronomy equivalent of ‘Local Man Finds Chicken Nugget Shaped Like George Washington,’” he said.
The James Webb Space Telescope is celebrating its first anniversary. The telescope uses infrared technology and is positioned a million miles away from Earth. Over the past year, you have probably seen some of the breathtaking images produced by the telescope.
Some of the big accomplishments from the past year include taking some of the deepest images of the universe that we have ever seen.
“We have have been learning a lot about the early universe, about how galaxies form , there have been some surprises that make us re-look at the modeling. We’ve detected the first black hole in the universe but we’ve also studied the planets in our own solar system and we can study weather on these planets and their moons” said James Webb Space Telescope manager Lee Feinberg.
On Wednesday, NASA released a new image. Feinberg explains what the image shows. “The closest star-forming region to us, its only a little over 400 light years away, so it is in our galaxy, but we are seeing baby stars being born out of dust and gas, much like how our own sun formed.”
The James Webb telescope is designed to take us back into the early universe so we can learn more about how it formed.
To keep up with the latest findings from the JWTS visit nasa.gov or follow them on social media.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has hardly opened its eyes and the universe is new– more mysterious, more beautiful than humanity’s dreams. The largest telescope ever flown launched into deep space on Christmas Day, 2021. Its primary mission is to reveal the “let there be light,” moment when the stars and galaxies first ignited after the big bang. Recently, we got a look at some captivating images as Webb peers back toward the origin of everything.
This is one of Webb’s early deep dives into the cosmos— 250 hours of exposures that expand the imagination.
Scott Pelley: And all these little dots are stars?
Brant Robertson: All these little dots are galaxies, some of which are bigger than our own.
Astrophysicist Brant Robertson flew us through 130 thousand galaxies—half never seen before— enormous swirls of billions of stars each, some like our own milky way, and others, well, out of this world.
Brant Robertson: We call this galaxy at the center of the screen the cosmic rose. Just by chance, it looks like a rose does. You can see that dusty red irregular galaxy.
Scott Pelley speaks with Brant Robertson about Webb telescope discoveries
60 Minutes
Brant Robertson: You know, space is more crowded than you might think, and actually galaxies wind up interacting with each other. They actually will merge together. So, I’m zooming in now on a pair of galaxies that are merging together, interacting. You can see that they’re disturbed, because the gravity of one galaxy yanks the stars out of the other galaxy.
Scott Pelley: They’re running into each other.
Brant Robertson: They’re running into each other.
Robertson, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, helps lead Webb’s most ambitious mission, the advanced deep extragalactic survey.
Brant Robertson: Well, we’ve discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe, the one that is the furthest away from us that we currently know about. I’d like to share that with you. Can I show you some pictures?
Scott Pelley: Please. I’d love to see it.
Brant Robertson: So as we zoom in we keep going, we keep going, and now this red splotch that you see there, that galaxy, that’s a galaxy. That galaxy is more than 33 billion light years away.
Scott Pelley: How long after the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe, did this galaxy form?
Brant Robertson: It’s amazing. It’s only 320 million years after the Big Bang.
The most distant galaxy so far, there on the right, doesn’t look like much but, astronomers can fill textbooks by analyzing the spectrum of its light.
Brant Robertson: So we can actually measure things like how fast it’s forming stars. We can measure the amount of stars in the galaxy. We know the size, ’cause we know how far away it is. And we know the typical age of the stars in the galaxy. So, we know a lot.
The earliest galaxy so far, formed when the universe was 2 percent of its current age. And the baby galaxy ignited stars at a furious pace.
Brant Robertson: It’s like a hummingbird. You know, the heartbeat of this galaxy is so rapid.
Scott Pelley: What do you mean by that?
Brant Robertson: Well, this galaxy is forming stars at about the rate of the Milky Way, even though it’s 100 times less massive. So it really is like a hummingbird, the heartbeat of this galaxy is racing.
James Webb Space Telescope
NASA, SkyWorks Digital, Northrop Grumman, STScI
More than a few human hearts were racing in 2021 as the $10 billion observatory readied for launch.
Earlier that year we were among the last to see Webb in California before it was folded into a 15-foot-wide nosecone.
Scott Pelley: Well, somehow, that’s a lot bigger than I imagined.
Twenty five years in the making, Webb is named for an early NASA administrator. Northrop Grumman engineer Amy Lo showed us, down below, the silver colored sun shield, big as a tennis court, and 21 feet of gold-plated mirrors for gathering light.
Scott Pelley: There are 18 of these hexagonal mirrors. But when you fold them out, they all work in concert as one mirror?
Amy Lo: That’s right. All 18 images will form one very nice, solid image.
Webb lofted on a European rocket into an orbit around the sun, a million miles away. To set up for observations, engineers used a star to align those mirrors. But the image was speckled with what looked like artifacts of digital noise—which forced a closer look.
Carina Nebula
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Matt Mountain: These were not artifacts from the detector. These were not strange stars. The whole of the sky was filled with galaxies. There was no empty sky. And that’s when I went, “This telescope’s going to be phenomenal.”
Matt Mountain leads Webb’s operations as president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.
Scott Pelley: No empty sky? What do you mean by that?
Matt Mountain: On almost every image we’re taking now, we see galaxies everywhere. I mean, we took a simple picture of a planet in our own system, Neptune. You know, it was this beautiful orb just sitting there and we saw some rings. In the background are galaxies again. It tells us that our universe is filled with galaxies. We knew this theoretically but when you go out to the night sky, we’re used to saying, “Well, look up at the night sky, we see those stars.” We can no longer say that. We now have to say, “Look up at the night sky and there are galaxies everywhere.”
Scott Pelley: We call it space because we thought there was nothing out there.
Matt Mountain: There is no empty sky with James Webb. That is what we have discovered.
Matt Mountain says that Webb is a reminder of how much we do not know. For example, galaxies are rushing away from each other at greater and greater speed, defying gravity. It makes no sense. So scientists infer that there must be unseen elements at work. They call them dark energy and dark matter.
Matt Mountain: And whenever you hear the term ‘dark energy,’ or ‘dark matter,’ this means we don’t know what it is. We’re not that imaginative. But it is a force, it is 95% of our universe. And we have no idea what it is.
Scott Pelley: Wait a minute, 95% of our universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter and we don’t know what it is?
Matt Mountain: Correct. We are lucky if we even understand 4% of our universe today. Astronomy is a very humbling discipline.
Humbling but, with Webb…
…also thrilling.
This is Purdue University astronomer Dan Milisavljevic, starstruck, and chatting with a colleague.
Even Wilbur, who’s not an astronomer, strained to see what the excitement was about. Milisavljevic studies exploded stars which were the furnaces that forged the first heavy elements from a cosmos of simple helium and hydrogen.
Dan Milisavljevic: Every time there’s a supernova explosion, it’s producing the raw materials for life. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that we breathe, (inhales) love that oxygen, all that is being manufactured in supernova explosions.
Scott Pelley: The late astronomer, Carl Sagan, used to say, ‘We’re all made of star stuff.’
Dan Milisavljevic: That’s exactly right.
Webb reveals unprecedented detail at the center of these explosions.
Dan Milisavljevic: And that’s what Webb is most sensitive to for our purposes, understanding what’s happening inside the explosion that we couldn’t see before, because it only comes out in infrared light.
Infrared light is what Webb is designed to see. Like a night vision camera, the telescope is sensitive to heat radiation, which is all that remains of the light reaching us from the dawn of time. Trouble is, infrared is invisible to the human eye.
Scott Pelley: When you first pull up the Webb data, what does that look like?
Joe DePasquale: Essentially, it looks like a blank screen.
Alyssa Pagan and Joe DePasquale are astronomers and science imagers for the Space Telescope Science Institute. This is what a Webb infrared picture looks like until they match the data filled darkness to colors of wonder.
Alyssa Pagan and Joe DePasquale
60 Minutes
Joe DePasquale: So we take those longest wavelengths of infrared light and give those the red colors. The next, shortest wavelengths would be green, and then the shortest wavelengths that we get from Webb are colored blue. And so, just like how our eyes work, we take those three color channels, combine them together to create the full color images that we see from Webb.
Among their favorite images is this cluster of stars with the not so wondrous name–NGC 346. Cosmic dust sculpted into ripples by interactions between stars and the Tarantula Nebula, a star birthing nursery on a backdrop of galaxies.
Scott Pelley: It occurs to me you are the first two people to see these images in human history.
Joe DePasquale: It’s quite an honor.
Alyssa Pagan: Yeah. It is a great honor and it does blow your mind every time.
There will be many mind-blowing revelations. Webb is already the first to find carbon dioxide in the sky of a planet 700 light-years away. It will continue to look for planets with atmospheres that might support life.
On the other end of the time scale, astrophysicist Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado, Boulder thinks her team may have made a discovery that she says would break the theory of how the early universe formed.
Erica Nelson: Either this is wrong, or this is a huge discovery, and we think that it’s a huge discovery.
More observations are needed but Nelson is investigating what may be five giant galaxies that appear to have formed much too quickly after the big bang. If they’re confirmed, astronomy may have to revise the timeline of galaxy formation.
Cassiopeia-A
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Erica Nelson: And that’s the most exciting piece of this, of this telescope, of this remarkable instrument we’ve put in space, is finding things that we didn’t expect, that we can’t explain. Because that means that we have to revise our understanding of the universe.
Brant Robertson, who showed us the earliest galaxy found so far by the James Webb telescope, told us the record for the earliest will not hold long.
Scott Pelley: How far back can you go to the origins of the universe?
Brant Robertson: Well, JWST is so phenomenal that if you spend enough time, you could probably find any galaxy that ever formed in the universe. It’s really that powerful.
Scott Pelley: Will the history of astronomy be divided between before Webb and after Webb?
Matt Mountain: Yes. I believe it will be.
Matt Mountain, who manages Webb operations, told us the observatory may last up to 25 years, perhaps long enough to comprehend space and time and the origins of life.
Matt Mountain: We’re seeing a universe we’ve never seen before. We thought it was there, we hoped it was there, but now we see it for the first time.
Produced by: Aaron Weisz. Associate producer, Ian Flickinger. Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Edited by: Michael Mongulla.
NASA released some new images from the James Webb Space Telescope of the farthest galaxies ever captured on camera, including the once-hidden features of an “hourglass” cloud that shows the earliest stages in the birth of a new star.
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Two intertwined stars are creating what looks like a “fingerprint” in space. NASA released a photo Wednesday taken of the duo by the James Webb Space Telescope, which shows at least 17 dust rings surrounding the stars.
Two stars, known collectively as the Wolf-Rayet 140, are creating dust rings in space that resemble a fingerprint in a photo taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA
The photos were taken with the help of the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, which was created by NASA and the European Space Agency.
The stars, known collectively as Wolf-Rayet 140, are located 5,000 light years from Earth, NASA said in a news release. Each dust ring is formed as the two stars come close together during their orbit, causing gases emitting from both to compress and make the rings, NASA explained.
“Transforming gas into dust is somewhat like turning flour into bread: It requires specific conditions and ingredients,” NASA stated about the dust rings.
Each ring takes about eight years to form.
“We’re looking at over a century of dust production from this system,” astronomer Ryan Lau said.
NASA revealed that the pair is near the end of their life, which will cause them to collapse and form a black hole. Stars that are categorized as Wolf-Rayet have at least 25 times more mass than the sun, and pump out huge amounts of gas.
The duo may have shed more than half of their original mass over time, according to NASA.
Astronomers also believe the winds coming from the stars swept the surrounding area of any debris that could smear the rings, which is why they can be seen so clearly by the telescope.
“There are likely even more rings that have become so faint and dispersed, not even Webb can see them in the data,” NASA said.
The swept-up material from Wolf-Rayet stars can accumulate and form new stars. NASA revealed there is some evidence to show the sun may have also been formed that way.
Only 600 Wolf-Rayet stars have been found by astronomers in the sky, but they say there should be at least a few thousand.
