'Bit of panic': Astronomers forced to rethink early Webb telescope findings - Nature.com

Astronomers have been poring over early data from the James Webb Space Telescope.Credit: Nolan Zunk/University of Texas at Austin.

Astronomers have been so keen to use the new James Webb Space Telescope that some have got a little ahead of themselves.

Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies.

The next official round of updates to Webb’s calibrations are expected in the coming weeks from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which operates the telescope.

This is the first scientific image released from the Webb telescope publicly, on 11 July, showing a deep-field look at the sky that includes a number of distant galaxies.Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

The STScI made it clear that the initial calibrations to the telescope were rough, says Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“It’s been a long time since the community has had a brand-new telescope in space — a big one with these amazingly transformative powers,” Rigby says.

Webb telescope spots CO2 on exoplanet for first time: what it means for finding alien life.

But given the demands on Webb, they had only enough time to point it at one or two calibration stars, and to take data using just one of NIRCam’s ten detectors.

Within days of the first Webb data release, non-peer-reviewed papers began appearing on the arXiv preprint server, reporting multiple candidates for the most distant galaxy ever recorded.

Link: Webb telescope wows with first image of an exoplanet.

In the meantime, astronomers have been reworking manuscripts that describe distant galaxies on the basis of Webb data.

“We’ve come to realize how much this data processing is an ongoing and developing situation, just because the observatory is so new and so young,” says Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen who has been developing Webb calibrations independent of the STScI.

Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies

Webb telescope spots CO2 on exoplanet for first time: what it means for finding alien life

Link: Webb telescope wows with first image of an exoplanet

Webb telescope wows with first image of an exoplanet

Webb telescope spots CO2 on exoplanet for first time: what it means for finding alien life

Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies

Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies

Webb telescope spots CO2 on exoplanet for first time: what it means for finding alien life

Link: Webb telescope wows with first image of an exoplanet