In the top half of the image, those bright objects are actually thought to contain two further baby stars! Webb’s infrared vision is particularly suited for studying young stars and their outflows, as infrared light can pierce through obscuring gas and dust.

The “string” here is Herbig-Haro (HH) 797. A Herbig-Haro object is the bright region that surrounds newborn stars, formed when the stars’ outflows collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds.

Everything is not as it seems 🪄 See that string at the bottom of this image? It’s made up of 2 baby stars spewing out almost parallel jets of gas. Astronomers used to think there was just one star, but Webb’s high-resolution view shows more to the story: esawebb.org/images/potm231…

@RolersonRoly @NASA Hope you had as good a Friendsgiving as we did! 🥰 P.S. We love your work! Could we please add it to our digital art gallery? Email us at [email protected] if you're interested ✉️

How about 2 record-breaking black holes for #BlackHoleFriday? -Webb detected the most distant active supermassive black hole to date: go.nasa.gov/3SRGJD5 -@chandraxray & Webb teamed up to study a black hole seen 470 million years after the big bang: go.nasa.gov/3QWUrlx

Learn more about how Webb… 🪐 Studies exoplanets: webbtelescope.org/news/news-rele… 🕯️ Uses “standard candles”: esawebb.org/images/potm230… 👀 Checked out Stephan’s Quintet: nasa.gov/image-article/…

This #BlackHoleFriday, we’ve picked up an exoplanet bundle, some standard candles, and galactic group Stephan’s Quintet. What’s pulling you in? nasa.tumblr.com/post/734882422…

🍂 This Friendsgiving, you’re all invited to our universal table. Here’s what some of our missions are bringing to the potluck. Take in the spread, then tell us what you’ll be putting on your plate!

As an infrared telescope, it’s only fitting for Webb to bring the (infra)red cranberry sauce — served chilled, of course. (Webb itself has to be extremely cold to detect faint heat signatures in space!) ❄️ twitter.com/NASA/status/17…

With Webb’s infrared sensitivity, scientists are not just able to delve into the chemical composition of the planet. They can also infer from the data about WASP 80-b’s birth, growth, and evolution. These results have implications for more exciting exoplanet science to come.

Webb used both the transit and eclipse methods, studying changes in light as the planet moved in front of and behind the star. Scientists then made spectra, or measurements of how much light was blocked or emitted by the planet's atmosphere at different wavelengths.

At 163 light-years away, WASP-80 b is far from us. But it orbits very close to its parent star, with a year of only 3 Earth-days! Though Webb can’t image this planet directly, we can still study the combined light from the star and the planet to learn about its atmosphere.

Catch a whiff of this. Webb made a definitive detection of methane gas in the atmosphere of “warm Jupiter” WASP-80 b. (The planet is similar in size to Jupiter, but with much warmer temperatures.) Hear directly from the research team on their discovery: go.nasa.gov/46mOvYx

#OTD in 2008, astronomers using @ESO's Very Large Telescope revealed a direct image – a picture – of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b. In the 15 years since, we've gotten other exoplanet images, but Beta Pic b remains a popular target, and it's glorious! 📷 ESO/A.-M. Lagrange et al.

#OTD in 2008 we released the first direct image of exoplanet #BetaPictoris b, taken with the now retired NACO instrument at #VLT: eso.org/public/news/es… Many more "firsts" enabled by direct images of Beta Pictoris b followed, see below! 👇 📷 ESO/A.-M. Lagrange et al.

Update: We've reposted the first tweet in this thread to correct a typo. Thanks for bearing with us, everybody!

The galactic center is only 25,000 light years away from Earth, close enough for Webb to study individual stars. Webb’s data will help astronomers learn more about star formation in an extreme cosmic environment — and along with it, the origin story of our universe.

Within this image, a cluster of baby stars glows through the cocoon of a dusty cloud. At the heart of the cluster is a still-forming star 30+ times the mass of our Sun! Wrapping around the dense cloud of dust is a previously unseen region of ionized hydrogen gas (colored cyan).

Wish upon 500,000 stars 🌟 Take in this magical view of the heart of our home galaxy. Seen by Webb in unprecedented detail, Sagittarius C is a star-forming region about 300 light-years away from the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center: go.nasa.gov/3QPWlnQ

Congrats to Dr. Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for Webb’s NIRCam instrument, for receiving @AstroSocietyPac’s Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal! Considered one of the “founding mothers of infrared astronomy,” Rieke was nominated for her leadership: go.nasa.gov/47b1mhK

For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from @NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that humans can play. More details, including sheet music, at: s.si.edu/music

In fact, it may be that young systems — including our early solar system — regularly switch between phases of UV and X-ray radiation. The team is already planning more observations of SZ Cha with Webb, as well as other telescopes, to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Webb found only traces of the neon III signature, indicating X-ray radiation. Scientists theorize an on-and-off wind may have absorbed UV light, leaving X-rays to hit the disk. Winds are common in a young planetary system, and perhaps Spitzer caught it during a wind-free period.

For scientists, neon is an indicator of how much and what type of radiation is hitting these planet-forming disks. Spitzer’s 2008 readings of SZ Cha showed an outlier. The telescope detected neon III, which suggested the radiation was by ultraviolet (UV) light rather than X-rays.

A huge disk of materials surrounds the Sun-like star SZ Cha. These materials have the potential to form planets, but this process is constrained by high-energy radiation (typically X-rays) eating away at the disk — which can limit the time planets have to form.

15 years ago, Spitzer saw unusual readings of neon III in a still-developing “solar system.” Webb just discovered the abnormal neon III has all but disappeared. Scientists believe clues to our own solar system’s past may lie in these flashing neon signs: go.nasa.gov/3ue7Y0q

Hear that? NASA podcasts are on @Spotify now: bit.ly/3MJRZNM

Decades of testing went into sending the Webb telescope into space — and now it's helping us out here on Earth. A simulation software improved by Webb's development is helping to design augmented reality displays and headsets, medical tools and more: go.nasa.gov/3u8UPpc

#ICYMI: @chandraxray and Webb recently teamed up to discover a record-breaking supermassive black hole. Webb’s infrared eye helped detect the black hole’s host galaxy, while Chandra’s X-ray detections helped confirm the existence of the black hole: go.nasa.gov/49wglUW

¡Un descubrimiento revolucionario!Nuevos hallazgos de @NASAWebb respaldan la teoría que explica cómo se forman los planetas. Aprende más: go.nasa.gov/3skmvXQ