JWST at Carnegie Science

Cutting-edge astronomy

JWST is an incredible new tool that is revealing never-before-seen details about the cosmos.

We are part of JWST's story

A Carnegie astronomer chaired the committee that first conceived of its capabilities. The project's chief scientist is an alumna of our postdoctoral program.

Carnegie Science astrophysicists and planetary scientists continue to showcase their creativity and propensity for bold research ideas using JWST. Over three cycles of telescope-time allocation, 13 projects headed up by Carnegie-affiliated astronomers have been selected to use JWST to study objects ranging from exoplanet atmospheres to the earliest generations of stars and galaxies.

This exciting new space telescope is already driving a new era of discovery. And its capabilities will complement the upcoming generation of extremely large ground-based telescopes, including the Giant Magellan Telescope under construction at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

A Major Contribution

Carnegie researchers have been involved with JWST since Observatories staff scientist Alan Dressler chaired the committee that led to its conception 25 years ago. The number of Carnegie scientists whose proposals have been selected for JWST observing time illustrates the outsized impact that this institution has had on the scientific endeavor.

John Mulchaey Deputy for Science and Observatories Director

The committee recommended an Origins program for a once-in-a-species opportunity to witness our cosmic beginnings, by constructing a space telescope bigger than Hubble. It would need to be extremely cold and positioned very far from Earth in order to observe these cosmic cradles using infrared cameras.

Alan Dressler Carnegie Astronomer

The Webb telescope was built to do four things and we showed that it could do all four of those on the first day that we released images.

Jane Rigby JWST Senior Project Scientist and Observatories Posdoctoral Alumna

John Mulchaey is Carnegie's Science Deputy, as well as the Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director of the Carnegie Observatories.

Selected JWST News

Remarkably detailed view of “teenage galaxies” from just 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang revealed by JWST

Last July, they pointed JWST at 33 specially selected ancient galaxies whose light traveled more than 10 billion years to reach us and stared with the new telescope for more than a day, providing the most detailed view of these early galaxies yet captured.

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This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. Courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

JWST enables research team to map the weather on an exoplanet 280 light-years from Earth

Through its ability to detect atmospheric gases and measure temperature variations, JWST is enabling an enhanced understanding of what’s happening on distant worlds and informing our plans for how to best search for evidence of life elsewhere.

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Artist illustration of WASP-39b, courtesy of NASA, ESA, and J.Olmsted

Detected: sulfur compound created by photochemistry in exoplanet atmosphere

Photochemistry is common in our own Solar System and crucial to Earth's atmospheric makeup, as well as to fundamental life processes such as photosynthesis.

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Thousands of galaxies flood this near-infrared image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. High-resolution imaging from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined with a natural effect known as gravitational lensing made this finely detailed image possible. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

JWST is Alan Dressler’s dream come true

Decades after chairing the committee that first proposed JWST, Carnegie astronomer Alan Dressler is using the space telescope's Near InfraRed Camera to take extremely deep images of about 900 galaxies from the first billion years of the universe’s lifetime.

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