JWST's near-infrared spectrograph, used to separate incoming light into wavelengths and identify surface minerals.
JWST's NIRSpec recorded the same unexplained 1.6-micrometer emission line twice in a Hubble Ultra Deep Field patch in 2023. Earlier Hubble and JWST data show nothing at the spot, and a brief flare from something too dim to see is one possible reading.
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Webb spectra identified nine new brown dwarfs in the IC 348 nursery, the faintest estimated at about two Jupiter masses, a record low for the class. It is still open whether brown dwarf formation stops there or this survey simply could not see any fainter.
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JWST found water-altered clay minerals on two of Neptune's small inner moons and its rings, with no water ice. The likely source is the shattered interior of a much larger lost moon.
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Pengpei Zhu's group used JWST to weigh the neutral gas streaming out of 23 quiescent galaxies from the universe's first two billion years, and the speeds they measured keep most of that gas gravitationally bound.
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Two years after the same team stopped at three to four Jupiter masses in this cloud, deeper Webb imaging and spectroscopy reached 0.19 percent of a solar mass, below where models of cloud collapse sit comfortably.
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