The Supermassive Podcast - 32: JWST First Images... FINALLY!

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

Izzie and Dr Becky freak out over the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. From seeing the deep (not so deep) field with Steve Wilkins from the University of Sussex, to exploring exoplanet atmospheres with Dr Hannah Wakeford from the University of Bristol. Plus, Dr Robert Massey takes the team through the September night sky.  Pre-order The Year in Space, out October 27th 2022 https://geni.us/jNcrw Send in your questions for next month's Year in Space Q&A to [e-mail] The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media Production by Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham for the Royal Astronomical Society. 

and this room full of galaxy experts was like whoa what are we looking at we saw those bumps and wiggles that absorption from water in the atmosphere this is just the beginning and what is this next generation of astronomy going to involve hello and welcome to the super massiveive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst. It has finally happened. We have seen the first science images from the James Webb Space Telescope. You know, we had that amazing cluster image showing those distinct galaxies. We had the fabulous cosmic cliffs image that I think is like everyone's desktop wallpaper by now.

You know, it always looked 3D, didn't it? We had Stefan's quintet of those four galaxies interacting in that beautiful interloper in the foreground. We had the ring nebula as well, revealing that hidden star in the middle. We had a spectrum, Izzy, a spectrum. You're all getting excited about images and i was asked if this is a like spectrum and it was another exoplanet revealing that there was you know water in its atmosphere and we've been treated to one extra as well since then right of the cartwheel galaxy too so i mean i guess we're being spoiled a little bit yeah i mean we knew it was going to be big, but we were not prepared. No, no one was.

They are amazing. And do you know what? What's even more amazing is because last time we were live at Stand and Calling, we've waited more than an entire month to talk about it. So, you know, when July the 12th hit, I just couldn't work. I'd stayed up the night before waiting for president joe biden

to release the first image did you go insane to the cold music the nassau music i was literally just about to say this the waiting music you're like half an hour delay an hour delay i was like i i might give up i might give up but no it was worth it that deep view was incredible as the first image to be released, like just incredible. So yeah, after that Tuesday completely went out the window. I wish that happened to me.

So I was at NAMM, the National Astronomy Meeting, which is like the, you know, the conference that's annual every year for UK astronomers. It was like 500 of us all there. So you can imagine like the atmosphere, like Monday night in the bar,

it was all that everyone was talking like monday night in the bar it was all that everyone was talking about tuesday night at the bar it's all that everyone was talking about but you know like we did just want to drop everything but we were in like sessions presenting work and stuff so you know like on tuesday i had to give a talk about my work and then like run to the other room where everyone was watching the live stream coming through as well like it was absolutely i mean this the atmosphere like i said was just amazing i can't quite put it into words just like the buzz that was there because there was not a single field of astronomy that wasn't going to get changed by these new science images and that everyone was basically

going to be scrambling to download the data and basically while they were there with all their colleagues just like oh what can we find i know i was actually quite jealous that everyone was there all together i was like this is a party and i want to be there but i turned up to nam the national astronomy meeting later in the week yeah so i caught up with stephen wilkins from the university of sussex to chat about that deepest view of the universe captured by web and exoplanet expert hannah wakeford from the university of bristol to talk about the chemical signature from, surprise, surprise, an exoplanet called WASP-96b.

So we'll hear from both of them shortly. But before that, we have Dr Robert Massey, the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society here too. So, Robert, just how much have these first images from James Webb changed the world of astronomy? Well, both of you definitely took over NAMM that week and absolutely dominated the meeting, which was actually nice, wasn't it? There were a bunch of astronomers for once actually all together enjoying it. And, you know, yeah, some kind of party around it. Not a bad thing at all. And, you know, yeah, some kind of party around it.

Not a bad thing at all. And I'll be honest, you know, I had a big sense of relief because I've been involved in sort of the public engagement side of this, advising on it for some time. And my real worry was always, oh, my God, what if it doesn't launch? What if the telescope mirror doesn't open? What if it doesn't, you know, work properly? Because I'm old enough to remember when Hubble was launched back in 1990. One month before I was born.

Yeah, all right. Yes, fine, fine. i was not even born well richard and i will just sit quietly at this point but when it launched though it was infamous because the mirror was slightly the wrong shape it had something called spherical aberration it was fixed really well three years later but what it meant was the first images were not what they should have been and so there was a bit of a oh hum we've spent quite a lot of money on this telescope and it's not really working properly so i'm really so happy that james webb is doing the right thing and you know yeah all the press conference hold music slightly quirky way it was announced all the rest of it but but but when you look at the images you think this is fantastic and i think

not only have they done a great job of releasing those and sharing these wonderful things that people are actually doing science on, all these papers coming out of these tentative images and people scrabbling around to understand what they mean. Hopefully, they'll follow that kind of Hubble route of something being out every couple of weeks or so, at least in the first year so that it maintains our enthusiasm. And every episode, we've got something to talk about. Yes. Yeah, i mean i've seen though a lot of people being like why isn't there more jw's team why isn't there one every single day why don't we see more images from web the

thing is there are there are images released every day they're just they're just released in their raw format like on the public you know access site online so they're they're that black and white grayscale infrared image like you were talking about robert right so they're they're not processed they're noisy there's not much signs you can grab out of them people got to remember these color images we're seeing take a long time to you know get into that beautiful state you know not the data's really changed it's just sort of like you know enhanced so that we can see all the different signs with our eyes so there is new images every day it's not just doing one thing every six weeks people got to remember just keep keep the people happy.

No, but on that, seriously though, because I saw a question on Twitter that was like, is this information from web publicly available? So could anyone access that? Yeah, 100%. It's called the MAST server. Essentially, if you Google MAST JWST, it will probably come up in some form.

And there's a load of tutorials on how to use it as well but essentially you put in an object pops up whether there's an observation of it or if there's a planned observation as well which is always good to know oh amazing so if anyone does actually do that please send us your beautiful pictures apparently uh richard and the robot mentioned before a mysterious producer richard he's just googled mast j.W. Stee and it does work it does come up so there you go

if you want to try it out go ahead but also you can read all about web and those images in our upcoming book The Year in Space which is out in October

available for pre-order now and I'll pop the link in the show notes but it was so funny because we've written this book in quite a short amount of time and the publishers were like so can we have it all done by the end of June? I was like, no.

We're getting those first images on the 12th of July. Please, please just wait a bit longer. So they're in there. We fought for them. They're there. I'm still relieved. Yeah. Anyway, cheers, Robert.

We'll catch up with you later in the show to take on some listener questions as well. So as I alluded to earlier, President Joe Biden hosted a press conference on Monday, the 11th of July, to finally reveal that first look of Webb's true capabilities. And we were not disappointed. Space Twitter blew up when they revealed the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date this is known as webb's first deep field but um becca you have some opinions on this yeah there's a big i don't know you'd call it an argument a discussion raging at the minute about whether it is truly a deep field like nasa has dubbed it a deep field but i think a lot of us would contest that so a deep

field is where you stare at an empty patch of sky and are like, what's there? We don't know what's there. This is an image of the galaxy cluster SMA-CS0723. And they focused on that. It's just that Webb is so sensitive and good and nothing like whatever used to that it could technically be called the deep field just because there's so many distant galaxies in the background that pop up. So technically not a deep field, but maybe we're going to have to

readdress the definition of deep field because of how good Webb is. Okay, so one way or another, this image is jam-packed with galaxies. So I spoke with Stephen Wilkins from the University of Sussex just days after it was released to find out exactly what we're looking at. Well, one of the main bits of science that Webb was always designed to do was to explore the very, very distant universe. So to find examples of the first stars and galaxies. And to do that, you need to take these very long exposures and, you know, take advantage of these clusters, these natural lenses. Okay. And so, you know,

can you just explain the path of light that comes from these galaxies? I mean, if gallwch chi ddatganfod y llwybr o hwydr sy'n dod o'r galegiaid hyn? Os edrychwyd ar y ddelwedd hon, mae'n anhygoel sut llawer o galegiaid wedi'u dynnu yn y ffotwm hon. Mae'n yr un peth y gallwch chi ei weld, ond maen nhw'r rhai o'r celfoedd mwyaf yn ein byd. Felly, siaradwch â mi drwy'r diwrnod o'r ffotwm. O ble mae'n dod o ac sut y gallwn ni ei weld? objects in our universe. So talk me through the journey of a photon. Where does it come from and how can we see it? Well the first key thing to know is that light takes a certain amount of time to travel through the universe. So it travels at the speed of light. So the further away we look, the further back into the universe's history we're looking. So if we start with a galaxy which is maybe present shortly after the Big Bang, we know it might take a few hundred million years for

galaxies to first form but once they can do they're going to start emitting light. And that yw efallai yn bresennol yn ystod y Rhan Gwledig. Rydym yn gwybod y byddai'n cymryd ychydig miliwn o flynyddoedd i'r galegau i'w ffurfio yn gyntaf, ond unwaith y gallan nhw ei wneud, byddant yn dechrau cymryd arian. Ac mae'r ffotôn yn mynd yn hapus i fynd ar draws y byd, hyd at i'w chyflawni rhywbeth neu ei fod yn cael ei ddysgwyl gan rywbeth. Felly, beth sy'n digwydd yw, bob nawr ac yna, bydd y ffotôns yn mynd i'w gyrraedd o ffwrdd mawr. Efallai yw'r star, rhywbeth o'i llai, efallai yw'r galeg, neu efallai yw'r clwstr cyfan o galegau. Ac mae hynny'n digwydd yn y cwmpas hwn, felly mae wedi mynd ymlaen i'r clwstr y galegau honno. Ac pan fydd hynny'n digwydd, mae'r ddwylo'r lliw yn cael ei ddifflecio. Ac mae hyn yn debyg i len. Felly mae'r len yn eich glas yn gwneud yr un peth, i gael

ystigmatisme yn eich wyliadau. Y rheswm pam mae hyn yn ddefnyddiol iawn i'r astronomwyr does exactly this to, you know, maybe fix any astigmatism in your eyes. The reason why this is really really useful for astronomers is that when this happens we end up magnifying the image of the galaxy behind and boosting the amount of light that we're able to see from it. So we use these, you know, these natural lenses to push further back in time and to see these really really distant galaxies which otherwise might be just little blobs even in the web images to see them in much more detail when we talk about the lensing galaxies these are the ones that look like they've been smudged a little bit they're curved i think on twitter i've seen people comparing them to the scream or um the melting clocks from dali or

something like that but how with that lensing them how is it that it allows us to see so far back o Dali neu rhywbeth fel hynny ond sut gyda'r llens yna sut yw'n ei fod yn ein gallu gweld yn fawr yn ôl yn dweud, wyddoch chi, a ydw i'n iawn yn meddwl bod y galeg mwyaf sydd wedi'i weld yn 13.1 miliwn o flynyddoedd? dyna'r un mwyaf sydd wedi cael ei gyhoeddi yn y ffaith yma nawr wrth edrych ar y ffynion y nos diwethaf rydym yn meddwl bod rhywbeth yna ychydig ychydig yn fwy ymlaen felly rydym wir yn wir yn hynod o gyffrous am hynny felly ie beth sy'n digwydd yn y bôn yw'r llai sy'n trafod Having looked at the images last night, we suspect there's actually some that are a little bit further away. So we're really, really excited by that. So yeah, what happens basically is this light travels through this cluster. The cluster will distort it. Sometimes you see something really special where you see the same galaxy more than once.

So this was actually predicted by Albert Einstein, you know, more than a hundred years ago now. But most of the time what you see happens is that these galaxies get smeared into these arcs. They often look like banana shapes. now but most of the time what you see happens is that these galaxies get smeared into these arcs they often look like banana shapes now sometimes you get something more special happening so you get these arcs that interact with another galaxy and i think you know one galaxy is being christened the slug because it kind of looks like a slug lying on top of another galaxy but although you know you're distorting the light from these galaxies you you can still, you know, reconstruct what they originally looked like. And you can see them in much more detail than you could otherwise.

Right. And we know that Webb is an infrared telescope. So how can you process these images into something that we are then able to see? So we've been doing this for a long time. In fact, many of the images that are really iconic from Hubble are not actually what we would see with our own eyes. All we really have to do is decide which of the different images that we take with these telescopes we're going to call red, green, and blue. And, you know, we have a standardized way of doing this, but it's fairly straightforward these days to actually do that and make, you know, any color image that you want. In fact, all of this data that we're going to get right now is public. So people can go ahead and

download it themselves. They can put it into Photoshop or, you know, another tool and they can actually make their own colour images, which is really cool. Just choose the colours that you want for each image and you'll make a, you know, a unique masterpiece of our universe. And now I don't want to be controversial, but is that misleading? a nawr dwi ddim eisiau bod yn gyffredinol ond a yw hynny'n anodd? yn aml, ni ddim yn dweud wrth bobl mai dyna beth fyddant yn ei weld yn gwirioneddol yn aml, chi'n gwybod, yn eu cyflwyno er mwyn dod allan i'r gwahaniaethau rhwng y ddiffygau gwahanol felly y gwahaniaethau rhwng y ddiffygau gwahanol y cwlwyr rydyn ni'n eu gweld hyd yn oed yn y ddiffygau hyn, yn ein ddweud rhywbeth am y, chi'n gwybod, y prosesau ffisigol sy'n digwydd these images are telling us something about the you know the physical processes that are happening in these galaxies so often when you see lots of blue in a galaxy that's telling you that you've

had you know recent bursts of star formation that's because very massive stars that are created in recent star formation they're very very hot and very very blue so it is a little bit misleading but we i don't we ever intentionally mislead. You know, if we just kept a whole load of black and white images, that just wouldn't be impressive. Yeah, it wouldn't certainly have the impact that it's had this week. So, you know, going forward, what impact is this telescope going to have? So the first thing to know is that these are just the first five images. These are a few days of observations. And frankly, we're already

overwhelmed by how much we could do. I think there are years of scientist time just analyzing these first five images, which is a little bit scary. But what they've revealed so far is that Webb is operating better than we expected, scarily better than we expected. And so it's given us our first glimpse of these, you know, very distant universe with Webb. But I'm really fortunate because I'm just about, today or tomorrow, going to get a whole load of data from another program that I work on. So I'm just kind of spoilt for choice. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was going to ask, you know,

what are you going to be using Webb for? What are you looking for? So I'm really interested in this deep field. So my specialism is trying to find these very, very distant galaxies. So trying to understand how they formed, how they, you know, enriched our universe with elements. So really the key thing there is I want to use, you know, images like the one, like President Biden's favourite, and then all of these other deep fields or even wider fields of just, you know, we call them blind fields or blank fields,

but that's just because we're not looking at anything nearby. These blind or blank fields end up being full of, you know, tens of thousands of galaxies. And, you know, all combined together, we're going to see, you know, tens of millions of galaxies from Webb over the next year or so. And those galaxies stretch back across the almost entire history of our universe. And the bit that I'm really interested in is those really, really extreme, really distant ones. Because those are the ones that we haven't been able to study with Hubble.

So Hubble is limited for this because, you know, these galaxies only emit light in the infrared due to the expansion of the universe. So we can only find them with Webb. That was Stephen Wilkins from the University of the universe. So we can only find them with Webb. That was Stephen Wilkins from the University of Sussex. Love Steve. We love Steve. We love him. So, but Becky, as a galaxies gal,

just how important is this deep view of the universe to you and the work that you're doing? I mean, it's hugely important, right? This field is called galaxy evolution. So the key thing is you almost want to watch how galaxies evolve from what they used to look like, because we can see that because light takes time to travel to us, to what they look like now. We're essentially, you know,

sort of piecing together that jigsaw puzzle about understanding what's caused a galaxy to change to get to how they look like now. We have a pretty good view of what they look like now, but obviously the view has very recently just got a lot better of what they looked like in the past. I think if I was going to make an analogy, it would be akin to a biologist finding some ancient fossil, right? And then that providing this new piece of the jigsaw puzzle to how life has evolved. But a fossil from the very first life on earth. This is what we're talking about here and finding in terms of getting all of the jigsaw puzzle pieces for galaxy evolution. Okay, so how was this image actually taken? Yeah, so this is a 12-hour total exposure time taken with one of the instruments on JDWIS-T called NIA-CAM, so the NIA infrared camera, essentially. So 12 hours essentially

means like the aperture the window that lets in light on the telescope was open for a total time of 12 hours collecting all that light for 12 hours and so it won't have stared at it for a full 12 hours at a time and then been like right we'll hit save after 12 hours yeah we don't hate ourselves instead what it's done is it's done in little chunks right and then they're saved incrementally and then they're added together later on in sort of the processing afterwards. And what's also been done here is that it's not just sort of letting in

all infrared wavelengths at once. What they do is they take the image a number of times through different filters. So they'll let in shorter wavelengths of infrared light, the stuff that's given out by hotter things like stars. And then they'll also let in longer wavelengths of infrared light that's given out by cooler things like dust and gas. So this makes the most sense if you think about in terms of visible light, right? You let red light through a filter and you color that filter red in your final image.

You let blue light through a filter, you color that blue in your final image, right? And then you get like a, you an rgb image built up like that would be the color you'd see with your eyes obviously with infrared you don't actually see that with your eyes so this is when we then color the filters it's a false color image but we still stick to the principle of the shortest wavelengths we color blue like blue light and the longest wavelengths we color red like red light and what that does is allows our eyes to pick up things that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to. With a grayscale image, your eyes aren't very sensitive to, you know, how

white is that white? Like how bright is it, for example. But then also your eyes are then sensitive in the color change to the different wavelengths. So you have things that are, you know, hotter giving out blue light and things that are cooler giving out red light, but also things that are further away that have had their light red shifted so much that they don't have as much blue light they have red light you can also pick those out as well so this false color yeah okay it's not something you'd see with your eyes but it allows you to pass the scientific information in the image way better than we would just with like four grayscale images of the different filters next to each other yeah and so i think the question that everyone wants to know is have we worked out the age of the oldest galaxy in this image okay so there has been

a huge flurry of claims of the candidate most distant galaxy in this image like so many papers in the week afterwards it was like no this is the most distant no this is the most distant no this is the most it was absolutely insane like some the most distant. No, this is the most distant. It was absolutely insane. Like some of them that have been claimed to have the light that's been traveling for over 13.6 billion years, which is insane. Like the light would have been, you know, left the universe when the universe was, you know, barely 200 million years old.

That is first stars and first galaxies territory. The thing is, these are just candidates. They're not confirmed yet because they've been picked out of an image. They've been picked out because they look redder than everything else. Then they don't appear in the blue filter, only in the red filter because their light has been redshifted so much. What that means though, is that when you try and estimate the amount the light has been redshifted and therefore how distant they are, because more distant things have their light more redshifted and therefore how distant they are because more distant things have their light more redshifted it is just your best guess your best estimate from which filters it's seen in and

which it isn't to get it more accurately what you need is a spectrum where you take all the light split it through a prism and you get that trace of how much light there is of each one and that way you can then pinpoint the redshift from all these different markers that we use to do that now eventually we will get that with JWST. I was going to say, because it has that technology, it's got a spectrograph on there. So, you know, that will come. It will come, exactly.

Yeah, but it takes time. This is the thing, right? I mean, it's doing a lot of science already that's already been scheduled of lots of various different things, you know, meticulously scheduled, right? And also when that data then comes on that we have spectra from you know we've never dealt with this data before i was chatting to a colleague um in oxford the other day saying you know he was on the sort of near spec science team so near spec being the spectrograph of jwst

and he was saying essentially like the calibration removing the noise all of that is far more complicated than they necessarily expected. You know, they're working through problems as they crop up, you know, just slowly but surely, essentially trying to get to grips with this data, used to it. So that, you know, six months down the line, a year down the line, you know, there's what we call a pipeline that you can just take raw data, plug it in and out pops the real. But that doesn't exist yet. They can have avoid with so much simulated data as they wanted to before it goes up but until they've got the raw they have no idea what they were dealing with so good science takes time and we just have to be that little bit patient

right to finally work out which one actually is the furthest galaxy in this image and no doubt it won't be the furthest galaxy we know because there's lots of other images, lots of other areas of sky that have been looked at with spectra as well. So I think, you know, in the next two or three years, it's just going to be this constant like fight of which is the furthest galaxy that we know of. So I can chat all day about galaxies because that's my field, right? It was mostly, you know, the images I was most excited to see as well, just to see what JWST was capable of. And then I can start getting ideas about what I want to do. And I first saw these images at the National Astronomy Meeting, NAM,

in a room full of other galaxy experts. Like we essentially hijacked one of the sessions where everyone was pending their research. And we're like, no, we're going to watch the live stream. I did it instead. And, you know, there was all these, you know, every image that would pop up. We're like, wow, look at that. Wow, look at the spectrum of that little galaxy. It looks so cool.

It's so incredible. And then the spectrum of the exoplanet came up on the screen. And this room full of galaxy experts was like whoa so cool what are we looking at we honestly had no clue to the point that like we were like isn't this supposed to be an absorption spectrum it's supposed to show you where there are like missing parts of light because there's say water in the atmosphere that's taking away some of that light so isn't it supposed to dip but it's peaking and they've labeled these peaks as water and then finally someone was like oh they flipped the y-axis so it's like amount of light absorbed that's why there's peaks and we were so confused like honestly there was just

this room for the galaxy experts i have no idea what we're looking at we sleep down well luckily i spoke to someone who knew exactly what was going on. And that is exoplanet scientist Dr. Hannah Wakeford from the University of Bristol. You might actually remember her from our fifth episode exploring exoplanets. And Hannah took me through Webb's chemical composition of exoplanet WASP-96b and what that means for studying planets outside of our solar system. So the planet that they showcased for us was WASP-96b. This is a typical hot Jupiter and I'm putting that in air quotes. So a hot Jupiter is a Jupiter-sized world that's over 11 times the

radius of the Earth, but it orbits its star really, really close. So it's over 20 times closer to its star than we are to the sun so that means that it's really hot and it's also tidally locked so the moon is tidally locked to the earth that means we only see one face of the moon this planet is tidally locked to its star so it has a permanent day side and a permanent night side and what what we were doing is we're looking at the planet as it passes in front of its star from our point of view so it's like looking at a fly passing in front of a street lamp it is the equivalent of about one percent change in the light but we can measure that and some of that starlight is shining through the atmosphere and that's exactly what we saw with this release was the light that had

shone through the atmosphere and picked up all of the signatures of what that atmosphere was made of. Okay so what were the signatures? What could this transit tell us about WASP-96b? So this transit showed us that in the atmosphere of this giant planet there's a lot of water vapour. So this is in the gas phase so this isn't water like we have beautiful clouds here on earth. It's not like liquid water that we've got here on our surface this is gas in the atmosphere because it's over a thousand degrees so think of it as steam and what we saw were the bumps and wiggles of that absorption so every atom and molecule absorbs light in different ways and we can measure across this spectrum by splitting all of that light up see those different atoms and molecules.

And that's what we saw. We saw those bumps and wiggles, that absorption from water in the atmosphere. Yeah, I like to think of this as like a sauna planet. This is what I'm thinking of. It's just super steamy and that's it. So, you know, how are you going to be looking into this more? Why is that important that we've been able to see this signal?

Yeah, so these planets have these amazingly puffy atmospheres and that means that it's easy for us to make this measurement so that's a really good thing for us that what we call the low hanging fruit it's the the easiest things for us to reach and grab but what this technique is going to teach us is how can we push this to smaller planets and one of the things that we're going to be seeing with JWST is that we can push to smaller and smaller worlds and actually in the last couple of weeks it's also taken the spectra of some very small rocky worlds around a very small star called Trappist-1 so we actually already have data from this telescope it's just amazing honeycomb in space that is looking at small terrestrial rocky worlds so we we have a lot of things coming for atmospheres of all types

across our galaxy okay i want to get onto travis one in a moment but going back to this steamy planet dare i ask do we know whether we can look for that sign of life so the planet that we're looking at in this press image this beautiful spectrum that they've released for us is not a place you would like to visit there is absolutely nothing there for us it is mostly hydrogen and helium, so it's like Jupiter. And actually, Jupiter has a lot of water in it as well. So we're seeing exactly what we expect, that there's lots of water in all of these planets. So we see that throughout our solar system. Earth is not the only planet in the solar system with water. In fact, Jupiter has more water than the Earth does. So we expected to see water there. But this but this again it's in the gas phase it's over a

thousand degrees it's the equivalent of sitting underneath a rocket as it's taking off that's how hot it is here so we do not want to be going to this planet okay fair enough and so obviously these are just the first images but you know you've already mentioned trappIST-1, but what is the potential for this field of research? There will be a time marked before data from JWST and a time marked after data coming from this telescope. It really will represent a paradigm shift in what we're able to understand about these planets. So, so far with the Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes from the ground, we've been measuring mostly oxygen-based species like water. So water is H2O, that is an oxygen-based species is what we say. But as we go into the infrared, which is why

this telescope is beautifully plated in gold, is so that we can get much more infrared light, we can start to measure the carbon species like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. And those are things that can help us understand how planets formed and where they formed. So not only are we able to access different information, but we can also, because it's so much bigger, look at smaller and smaller worlds. And can you remind me, you know, how is it taking this signal? Which instrument is this coming from? So the instrument that was showcased for us is the NEARIS instrument.

It is a near infrared instrument, and this spectrum is looking from about one micron. So just beyond the red part of what our eyes can see, really, out to about two microns or so. So that's just one instrument on this telescope. There are four instruments. They go all the way out into the mid infrared. We're going to be seeing so many different things. And in fact, there's some other instruments that I'm really excited to use because we are going to get higher resolution spectra. So the spectra that we're seeing is beautiful and it's better than anything we've seen before, but we can do more.

And so, you know, for you, what are you excited about? What is it that you're going to be studying and looking for? I like a little bit of everything, as you know. So I'm looking at everything. So I've got programmes where we're looking at brown dwarfs to study the clouds in their atmospheres. I'm looking at everything. So I've got programs where we're looking at brown dwarfs to study the clouds in their atmospheres. I'm looking at giant hot Jupiters like the one that we've seen all the way down through these Neptune-sized worlds

through to what we call super-Earths, so things that we don't know if it's rocky or not, and we're trying to understand that to these terrestrial worlds. So I'm going to be looking at absolutely everything, but one of the things that is really great with this telescope is that it's a community effort. And we have these community programs called Early Release Science Programs. And I'm working with a team of over 150 scientists across the world

to look at data from this telescope for the first time. And all of that is being led by a load of our grad students, so our PhD students, and that is just amazing to see that we've got these people coming into the field and they get to use this telescope right off the bat. We've been building up to it for decades now. I've been working on the precursor to this for ten years and now it's just so great to see the community coming together and really the next generation of scientists pushing forward.

So you've teased about TRAPPIST-1. So what are you looking for? What is Webb going to show us? So TRAPPIST-1, for people who don't know, it is this small star, which is just a tenth the size of our sun. It's small, it's red and it's cold. But orbiting around it it it has seven planets that are all roughly the same radius and mass of the earth so seven planets just orbiting around this

in fact it it looks a lot more like jupiter and its moons than it does our solar system because they're so compact the most distant planet has aday orbit. So these are really close to this star, but because it's so cold, these planets are actually temperate. Okay. And there are some which we would call in the Goldilocks zone, that nice little happy region where water could exist as a liquid if they have a surface. Yeah. We think they have a surface, but the thing that we're doing with this telescope is we are finding out if they have an atmosphere so the first thing that we want to understand about these small rocky worlds is do they have an atmosphere so we are looking for signatures of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere

and if we can measure that that's the start a little excited face there that is that is just the beginning so everything that we're going to be doing and this is just going to be happening over the next 12 months everything that we're going to be it's so insanely soon isn't it the amount of data that we're going to be getting in such a short amount of time is a little overwhelming if i'm honest with you i'm terrified at the just volumes of data that will be coming down, not only from this one planet system, but so many planet systems.

But we want to know if these planets have an atmosphere. And once we figure out whether they have an atmosphere or not, then we start digging deeper and start asking more questions and trying to understand, okay, they've got an atmosphere. What's it like there?

Thank you to Dr.annah wakeford from the university of bristol yeah hannah's awesome like she's honestly new best friend i found out she can quote my favorite film back at me and i was like yes my friend and also um she has an excellent podcast called exocast so go and listen to that as well but becky it's not just planets outside of our solar system that web can image is it no so we've had a beautiful demonstration of what jbst can do in the solar system as well and what it's capable of because people got to remember it wasn't just those um first five images that we got on july 12th it was every single image that was taken in that sort of two

three month period of commissioning of jbst So while they were trying to, you know, understand how it behaved and align everything correctly, they took loads and loads of images in that process. And that's all been made public as well for, you know, other people that are curious about what steps were made and if that then affects their science further down the line, et cetera, et cetera. But it also means, you know, while they were checking, what can it do? They pointed it at Jupiter. And they saw this amazing image of Jupiter and its moons as well. You've got Europa next to it.

It's incredibly bright. It looks so spectacular. And it's something we should get excited about because we have to remember there's so many unanswered questions about like the gas giants, as we've talked about on this podcast before. Yeah, absolutely.

Especially Uranus and Neptune as well, which, you know, Hubble had a decent view of, but not quite, you know, what we specifically, you know, wanted to ask in various different questions. So I'm really excited for the sort of infrared capabilities of JDBST and seeing the solar system in essentially this whole new light. This is the Supermassive Podcast

from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist, Dr. Becky Spenlis, and with science journalist, Izzy Clark. This month month it's all about the James Webb Space Telescope yes we know we said we'd do this last month but stand and calling was just too fun. That was amazing. But also hilariously after we recorded the podcast I quite literally bumped into Sam Ryder of Eurovision and Spaceman fame. And I had to leave early and I missed him and I was on the train and he was like, look. I was like, no. Yeah, it was so ridiculous.

So I was with Richard, our mysterious producer, and we'd literally just finished recording. We're like, obviously I'm going to stay to watch Sam Ryder. And also the sugar babes and the sugar you're most excited for yes also very much the sugar base um and because we were there we had a little wristband that was like oh you can go to a backstage bar so after that set we literally walked around this little gap in the fence just as he was coming off stage there was a group of kids like can we have an autograph none of them had pens or paper so there I was like with our old scripts bunch of like pens in my rucksack and I just went and I actually have pens and paper like do you want to

use this so I was literally there just like standing next to sam ripping up our scripts giving him pens and pencils kids were coming to me being like can you tell him to make it out to ben and i was like i'm not sure sure so there was this really weird moment but he's got a copy of like our book sample it was all very strange sam rider has a copy of Year in Space. You can get one too. The link's in the description. So yeah, it was just like one of those really bizarre moments. I guess a right place, right time. But I was like, this is not what I expected from today. I'm going to come and meet her.

My daughter was sort of, we had to leave early as well because we were going on a holiday the next day. And her and her friend, Arda and her friend Flora, you know, when they heard about this, I'm not sure they were completely impressed that we left early. So, yeah, so,

but now, you know, I'm clearly, you know, I mean, obviously, obviously Izzy, had I known the backstage pass

was the good thing. yeah, that was it. And so we went to stand and calling for reasons that, you know. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. So it was, it was not just the podcast, I was there to, to stalk Sam, right? If only we could have got him to record a jingle for the podcast.

I thought, you know, it's one of those moments where you're like, this is just too much. Like, this has got too weird. I don't feel comfortable being like, and I've also got a microphone in this sack of like pens and scripts. Absolute creeper. Mary Poppins bag. Hey, the life of a producer. What can I i say um but anyway let's get back to web so robert becky what are your favorite photos so far well

so far i mean everybody's talked about the deep not deep field right you know we've got a lot which i'm going to remember now but uh but i like the southern ring nebula as well i guess actually because that's the kind of thing you can see quite well if you're in the Southern Hemisphere with a small telescope. And it's somehow really nice to see. I know this sounds silly, but, you know, we like looking at the moon, right? We like looking at the moon through bigger and bigger telescopes. And I think the same applies to most of these objects.

If you can actually see it with a little telescope and you can point something like Webb at it or previously Hubble and see the exquisite detail and understand that all those ways in which we think these planetary nebulae form you know they're kind of mostly verified by by the wonderful power of James Webb and I really like the fact that you know it reveals these two stars in the center one of which has shed these beautiful outer layers is this planetary nebula which is what the sun will do at the end of its life and the fact that there's a companion next to it a little red one going around as well and stirring the whole thing up so and yeah it just has it looks a bit like an eye actually as well

does it not quite the eye of sauron image but it does have that feel about it so for some you know i know i know we don't talk enough about the southern skies probably because we're mostly based in the northern hemisphere but southern you know any southern hemisphere listeners should take a look at this object too and then then go back to the james webber telescope image and compare it the jwst image and compare it i think mine is stefan's quintet i mean i i mean that i my work is on nearby galaxies right i'm gonna bloody love that image girl strikes again yeah the reason i love I love it though is that, so one of the galaxies in the top right of the image is interacting with the one below it. And we always thought, you know, in these interactions,

that can sort of funnel gas to the center and you feed the supermassive black hole in the middle. And you usually can see that. You know, we call these quasars. They're incredibly, incredibly bright because the gas that's spiraling around the black hole is accelerated to huge speeds. It heats up and it starts to glow. But if there's a load of dust in the way, that light gets blocked. So we have these like type one quasars and type two quasars, right? Ones you can see and ones you can't see. And when you look at the same Stefan's

quintet with Miri, which is another instrument on JWST, which sees in the mid-infrared wavelengths, much longer wavelengths, really cold temperatures, we're talking sort of like 9, 10 Kelvin here, that it's looking for the sort of, you know, objects that are giving out that kind of light at that temperature. That actually essentially sees through dust so much better

and sees the dust itself. And essentially essentially if you look at it with miri you can see the light from the material spying around the black hole and you couldn't see it in the near cam image and it just appears it's this whopping great big just like point source that's just like it almost looks like a star in our own galaxy in the way and it's just like pow and like you and we've realized that with web you can actually pick out so many more of these growing supermassive black holes because they're so bright in the center of their galaxies they make that distinctive star shape in the middle of the galaxy so in the

deep field images we've been zooming into the background and finding oh that galaxy's got a growing supermassive black hole because you can just about see that bright point star shape in the center of the galaxy that i was just like yes this this yeah well i like that because we've all gone for different ones because for me i it has to be the karina nebula i know that everyone is saying this this is the the cosmic cliffs but it was just that moment i think this was the last one that they revealed. And I was just aghast when that came up on screen. Just the amount of stars that are visible. I just think star formation is just so interesting anyway. And there you have these, it almost looks like an image of the ocean in a way.

When you see all the detail of this dust and this gas, and you're just like, I need to know more about this it's just it is it's honestly breathtaking and I think it was for me that moment we are not ready for this this is just the beginning and oh my goodness what is this next generation of astronomy going to involve for me that was just like a big moment. There is no surprise that we have had a bunch of questions. And Space Enthusiast on Twitter has just cropped an image of one galaxy from the Deep View image saying,

I've dubbed this galaxy Silly Putty. And it's so funny and I love that. And I think we should just analyse all of these images and just give them bizarre names. I think I haven't seen the cropped image but i think i know which one they're talking about and we've dubbed it the slug so yeah i'm all for like dubbing them fun names like let's let's go out and do that now yeah yeah except one of them has to be called to me really random like bob isn't there gonna be a toenail oh yeah we've got to be we've got to find one of the arcs

surely that just gives me the creeps man sorry but anyway twitter questions robert um we who rob asks within the lifespan of jwse how much of the sky can web cover in detail yeah that's a really interesting question uh me who rob um and when And when you think about the images that came out, the commissioning images, what you saw is that the different instruments cover slightly different bits of sky close to each other. And so they assembled them all together, you know, to give this perspective. But, and it's also worth remembering as well, that at any one time, there's a large bit of the sky that JWST cannot look at because it's the direction of the sun, it's the direction of the earth, and you have to keep the telescope cold and look away from those things.

So it takes quite a long time to access the whole sky. But even more importantly, when you look at the field of view, although it's not bad by the standards of telescopes, it's typically, with the wider instrument, maybe about a four hundredth of a square degree. maybe about a 400th of a square degree. And the sky, the whole sky has an angular area. Just, you know, if you imagine, you know, square degrees across the whole sky, 41,000 of those. So it would take about 16 million exposures to cover that sky. So you can see where I'm going. This is going to take a very, very, very long time to cover the whole sky.

And if you did images like the deep field field not deep field that we had last month that which lasted 12 exactly it lasted 12 hours if you try to cover the sky with exposures of light about assuming you could it would take about 20 000 years now the telescope has a lifetime of 10 years so even if the 20 20 we think 20 well the 20 would be fantastic. Yeah, because the launch was so good, it'd be 20. But not 20,000. Even with 20. So it's really the absolute maximum of 1,000th of the sky.

So it's not that kind of telescope. And we have other telescopes mostly on the ground, actually things like VISTA in Chile and the Vera Rubin Observatory that will be there in the next few years as well that have that kind of job. So there are these survey telescopes that are dedicated to that time of work, but JWST is not going to do that.

It's there for specific targets. But I think that's what's cool about it is that if Vera Rubin Observatory gets this survey of the sky, we find something interesting in it, JWST is there to follow it up. And I think that's always going to have been JWST's role, right?

Is that like you say, like, ooh, this looks cool. Let's observe that in more detail. Okay, and Becky, Cyberclops has shared some pictures on Twitter. So this is from the Carina Nebula image and they've just cropped a tiny bit in the sort of, well, left-ish part of it. And they've said, in this yellow star, is that a tail and and it actually what exactly

is that because can stars have tails because it looks a bit like a comet you know you can yeah a central bit and then towards one side there is a sort of yellow glow cone tail thing yeah exactly it really does look like a comet that's the best way of describing it and it's not a comet photobombing the image unfortunately you know like solar system foreground just passing through yeah it's actually outflow like outflowing material from this very newly formed star so usually these are what we call biconical okay so they have two cones that essentially come out from either side so we're only seeing one of the cones presumably either because of dust or observational bias effects something going on there that's hiding the other side. That's usually quite

common. We tend to only see sort of one aspect of stuff like this, you know, especially because it's also moving away from us and all that kind of stuff as well. But if you think about, you know, you said you loved star formation, Izzy. So I have a star formation lesson, right? It's very turbulent, it's very, very disturbed. A new star that's forming, you've just triggered nuclear fusion fusion so you can imagine sort of all that energy and radiation that's just all of a sudden just been switched on it's very chaotic there's a lot of pulsing going on as essentially the star settles down um and you get that eventual balance between the energy and the radiation pushing outwards that's created nuclear fusion and then essentially gravity pulling inwards on the amount of material that's there in the star that all happens inside these big dust shrouds

so these huge big dust clouds because dust acts as a catalyst to cause hydrogen to fuse together so it can actually act as a catalyst to increase that or sort of increase the rate of star formation essentially and so when you have this newly formed star it's pulsing like crazy there's all this dust around it still. That's essentially getting thrown off by these pulses of radiation that come out of it. Then you get these big outflows coming out of stars as well. So that's essentially what you're seeing there. Okay.

And Robert, Phil Ashford has a question about scale. He says, these photos look amazing, but how big are they? And what distances are they covering? And the answer to that question, Phil, is it really depends what you're looking at. So if you're looking at something like that Southern Ring Nebula, you could be looking at fairly small clumps of material. Now you can see the stars in the centre, even a white dwarf star still kind of the same size as the Earth,

the one next to it may be a proportion of the size of the Sun. And so you're looking at something which is maybe a factor of 10 times the size of the solar system so pretty big by terrestrial standards but small on the scale of the universe whereas obviously if you're looking at things that are much much more distant like distant galaxies like the you know the infamous glass z13 which might just be have been around when the universe was 290 million years old, that could be at the very least tens of thousands of light years across. So, and, you know, closer galaxies, big things that we see in our own epoch, they could be 100,000 light years across and more. The clusters of galaxies could be millions of light years across. So it very much

depends what you're looking at and how far away the objects are, because we tend to measure things in astronomy in angular size sometimes because we're not absolutely sure how far away they are, whereas you can definitely measure the angular size. But, yeah, there's a big difference in the scale depending on exactly what you're looking at. By the way, I did like the fact that the possible earliest galaxy has the nickname Macy's Galaxy named for the project head's daughter, even if that won't be official.

I mean, I don't know whether we're going to see Becky's Galaxy at any point. No, I doubt it. I do like the idea that we've got Macy's Galaxy and we've got the slug. I'm sure Macy's is very proud to... I won't comment on the relative merits of those two names. Okay, Becky, and the real spiny asks do we expect to learn more about dark matter in this early universe image yeah definitely i mean mostly from um the smacs image this deep field not a deep field image we're going to learn about the distribution of dark

matter essentially and whether that distribution of you know where it's found has changed from the early universe to more recent times as well. And we can actually get this sort of distribution, this sort of map of where the dark matter is in great detail, you know, thanks to these high-res images from JDWristy, not just of SMACS, but loads of other clusters that it's targeting as well. And that's because they reveal these arcs in the image. So you've got the main cluster galaxies in the foreground, and then the background galaxies have essentially been, their light has been bent. So they're not, you know, their actual shapes anymore.

They've been bent, these large arcs, kind of like how, you know, if you take a stemmed wine glass and you move it in front of like a candle or something, like that light gets bent out into an arc by the glass, which is acting a lens. And here it's the massive galaxy cluster in the foreground that's acting as the lens as well and so from how much it's lensed and how many times you see that galaxy as well because the one background galaxy could be seen like three or four times because this lensing yeah you can then work out this map of where all the dark matter is

or where all the matter is essentially and then you say okay well that's where all the matter is that we can see because we've detected light from it yet there's all this matter is essentially. And then you say, okay, well, that's where all the matter is that we can see because we've detected light from it. Yet there's all this matter over here that we can't see. And that's the dark matter essentially. And so that's how we've always done these dark matter maps. We've done it with Hubble. We've done it in various other different telescopes as well.

But with JWST, because it gives you this higher resolution because it's such a bigger telescope, in the infrared wavelengths that you can see further in, it's so high res, you can get a much more high resolution map as well of where all the dark matter is too which can be really helpful amazing that's very exciting so thank you to everyone who sent in their questions and if you want to send in one then do so you can email podcast at ras.ac.uk or tweet at royal astrosocck. So Robert, finally, what can we see in the night sky this month?

Well, September is one of those, you know, these lovely months that it's not just about mellow mists and fruitfulness and the wonders of autumn, but actually... So poetic.

Yeah, it's so beautiful. Throw a bit of line in there. But also, it's a lovely time of year for looking at the sky because the nights are getting longer,

genuinely a bit darker than they do in the middle of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And actually, that makes it a real pleasure to go out as well. It's still reasonably warm at night. So you still have those summer stars there, the summer triangles. Although it's called the Summer Triangle, it's really very obvious into the autumn and the Milky Way. And if you take a look at that region, you can pick out certain objects. I recommend, like I often talk about, just looking at the Milky Way. But pick up a pair of binoculars.

You can find things like the lovely double star Albireo at the bottom of the Cross of Cygnus, the swan. And that's got blue and yellow stars in a fantastic contrasting pair. And just to the east of that, you've got things like globular star clusters. There's actually a lot of those all over the place. But a nice one is in Pegasus. So just to the left of us from the perspective of the northern hemisphere the globular star cluster messier 15 and you can sit with a pair of binoculars those kind of objects are really easy to see and obviously you know they tend to be a bit better with the telescopes too

but i'd also really very much recommend jupiter the biggest planet on our own system and you know not giant by exoplanet standards but pretty big nonetheless and that comes to opposition on the 26th of September so it'll be opposite the sun in the sky which means it's visible all night and at its closest to the earth as well and it's already really really bright and obvious in the otherwise rather faint constellation of Pisces and it'll be high in the south by one in the morning and even before that and earlier in the evening it'll be easier to see earlier in the evening as we move further into autumn and if you have a small telescope you're not going to get a JWST or Hubble type view of it realistically but you should be able to see things like cloud belts and the brightest four moons as well and one of the nice things you can

do with that you can look up the timings online is to check for when those moons are moving in front of the planet and what's called a transit and you can typically see the shadow of the moons doing that as well so a few days before that opposition the 21st of September there's a well-placed transit of the big moon Ganymede in its shadow that early in the morning and then finally if you're heading north it's as we get into the autumn it's a good time to start looking for the aurora borealis the northern lights lights. And if you avoid full moon, so the second half of September, you should start to be able to see those too if there's a nice display. And as solar activity is rising, the sun is getting more active, we should start to see more of those displays. And they're always a phenomenal thing. Now, you tend to think, OK, you go to Iceland, Norway, Greenland, Alaska, depending on your resources.

But even northern Scotland gets quite a few good displays over a year as well. So if anybody's listening up there, I'm sure they know to look out for it. It's a wonderful benefit of being in that part of the country. I think we should do a supermassive field trip. Personally, I'm for that. You know what?

I've just realised, Robert, as well, when you're saying that, when you're saying Jupiter is at opposition, JWST is always at opposition by definition of where it is right in the sky so if you can find jupiter in the sky in september which is like super bright so hopefully that's a fairly easy thing to find you're looking in generally the right direction for jdbst as well obviously there's some sort of plane issues and whatever but you know you'll be looking at jdb you're looking towards Jupiter which I think is really cool you can like wave at it like hi well I think that is it for this month we'll be back next time with a book special um we're going

to be doing a Q&A all about the year in space so send us your questions what do you want to know about anything that you've seen in space news this year and we'll be bringing back book club no funny you should say that is it because oh convenient yeah my book a brief history of black holes and why nearly everything you know about them is wrong is out on the 1st of september in hardback audio and ebook and i'm really excited it's really fun book it's all about sort of like how we now understand black holes and sort of how we understood them through history as well and the questions we still have about them. It's written for, you know, everyone to understand.

It's a public science book. So, yeah, if everyone wants to go out and order that, that would be great. So between you and us with the year in space, I think we've got most of space covered. Yeah, I think book club next month is definitely going to be good. And, of course, tweet us if you try some astronomy at home. It's at Royal Astrosoc on Twitter or email your questions to podcast at ras.ac.uk

and we'll try and cover them in a future episode. But until next time, everyone, happy stargazing.