Tuesday, October 7, 2025

The JWST isn't just for distant galaxies at the edge of time

 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was built to look into the depths of the universe, hundreds and thousands and millions of light years distant and into the past, and it has done that with amazing excellence.

(Of course, the Trump administration would love to shut it down, but it's too big to fire. But they can disable it by reducing NASA's science budget so much you need a telescope to see it.)

Enough of politics. The JWST can also find small little moons. (So can I. More on that later.)

JWST recently found a new moon of Uranus, and that's a planet, of course.

New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope  

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Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus in images taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). This image shows the moon, designated S/2025 U1, as well as 13 of the 28 other known moons orbiting the planet. (The small moon Cordelia orbits just inside the outermost ring, but is not visible in these views due to glare from the rings.) Due to the drastic differences in brightness levels, the image is a composite of three different treatments of the data, allowing the viewer to see details in the planetary atmosphere, the surrounding rings, and the orbiting moons. The data was taken with NIRCam’s wide band F150W2 filter that transmits infrared wavelengths from about 1.0 to 2.4 microns.

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