Tag: James Webb Space Telescope

Witnessing the Birth of Planets

Posted on by U-M Space Institute
planets
University of Michigan researchers contributed to an international collaboration that’s providing an unparalleled view into how planets are born using the JWST—the most powerful space telescope ever launched. In particular, the team studied PDS 70, a young star with two growing planets in its orbit. Located 370 lightyears away, this system gives scientists a rare chance to see how planets form and evolve during their earliest stages of development.

In Six New Rogue Worlds, Webb Telescope Finds More Star Birth Clues

Posted on by U-M Space Institute
stars
An international collaboration that included the University of Michigan has spotted six likely rogue worlds—objects with planetlike masses but untethered from any star’s gravity—using the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The discovery includes the lightest rogue planet candidate ever identified with a dusty disk around it. The elusive objects offer new evidence that the same cosmic processes that give birth to stars may also play a common role in making objects only slightly bigger than Jupiter.