observing

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is cooling down for its next trick: Observing the universe

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It’s been a whirlwind 38 days in space for the James Webb Space Telescope, but its chief scientist says the mission is well on track to uncover the universe soon. “The telescope is cold … the instruments are cooling,” John Mather, a Nobel laureate and astrophysicist who also works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in … Read more

A Cosmic Water Cloud Shadow Has Revealed The Temperature of The Early Universe

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Sometimes astronomers and astrophysicists are working at such gigantic, mind-bending scales – in terms of both distance and time – that you can’t help but be awestruck at the new discoveries they keep coming out with.   Case in point: a temperature check of the Universe in its youngest phase, just 880 million years after … Read more

NASA’s newly launched X-ray space telescope is ready to start observing the cosmos

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s newest space observatory, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is set to begin spying on some of the universe’s most dramatic objects — black holes and neutron stars — potentially changing our understanding of the cosmos in the process.  The 730-pound (330 kilograms) IXPE satellite launched to orbit on Dec. … Read more