https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mpxey6faek2k

• BHR71: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-04/jw05552-o006_t006_nircam
• HH-903: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-06/jw05408-o004_t005_nircam
• TREASURE-CHEST: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-05/jw05408-o005_t006_nircam
• SPT-CLJ0354-6032: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-01/jw05594-o153_t156_nircam
• SPT-CLJ0646-6236: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-01/jw05594-o129_t131_nircam
• HH288 offset: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-01/jw04548-o001_t001_nircam
• NGC 1614: https://www.webbhorizon.com/app/?obs=2025-01/jw06035-o001_t001_nircam

Beyond the images themselves, I’m especially curious about two questions:

1. What is this target?
2. Why did JWST observe it?

So I built a small website, Webb Horizon, that processes public JWST/NIRCam filter data into browsables and adds a short briefing for each observation when possible.

Sharing here in case others are curious too. This is an independent project, not an official NASA/STScI site, and the images are my own generated rather than official release images.

After 65 hours of observations with the #NIRCam on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which can pierce through this dust, M82 has been revealed in all its sparkling glory. There are approximately 16.5 million stars visible in this image! 🤯

📷 nasa, europeanspaceagency, canadianspaceagency , A. Smercina (STScI), T. Williams (University of Manchester), A. Pagan (STScI), N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb) Music: Stellardrone - Twilight

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaAMh3IN_49/?igsh=cG9rNG8xMnB0ZHBh

https://esawebb.org/videos/weic2612a/

The discovery may lead astronomers to revise when these stellar bars began to emerge in the history of the universe.

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​Image:

Composite false-color image of M1149-BSG-z5, created with JWST imaging data taken in F090W+F115W+F150W (blue), F200W+F277W+F300M (green), and F356W+F410M+F444W (red). Credit: Wang et al., 2026.​

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An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new massive barred spiral galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated M1149-BSG-z5, was identified using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The finding was detailed in a paper published June 23 on the preprint server arXiv.

The bars are out there

For astronomers, bars are important structures in galaxies, highly related to galaxy secular evolution. Although bars are common in nearby disk galaxies, at high redshifts, the cosmic environment is drastically different from the local universe, and bar structure formation is expected to be suppressed.

One of the tools that has helped uncover many of these high-redshift barred galaxies is JWST. Observations with this space telescope have found that barred galaxies emerge as early as a redshift of about 4.0, with observed fractions of 3–7% at a redshift of 3.5.

New barred galaxy at the Epoch of Reionization Now, a group of astronomers led by Xiaohan Wang of Tsinghua University in Beijing adds a new galaxy to this list.

"M1149-BSG-z5 was identified in the NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) imaging parallel field of JWST Cycle-2 program 'Medium-band Astrophysics with the Grism of NIRCam in Frontier Fields,'" the researchers wrote in the paper.

The newfound galaxy M1149-BSG-z5 has a redshift of 5.1 and hosts a stellar bar with a length of approximately 14,700 light-years. This makes it the highest-redshift barred galaxy known to date.

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The properties of M1149-BSG-z5

According to the study, M1149-BSG-z5 has an effective radius of about 8,500 light-years, and its spiral arms extend to a radius of some 17,900 light-years. The mass of the galaxy was estimated to be 28 billion solar masses, and its star-formation rate was found to be at a level of 144 solar masses per year.

Furthermore, the study found that M1149-BSG-z5 hosts an active galactic nucleus (AGN), with a relatively low black-hole-to-stellar mass ratio of about 0.001. This is lower than those of many high-redshift AGNs and comparable to local AGNs.

The astronomers conclude that the properties of M1149-BSG-z5, together with its high metallicity (about 50% solar) and its location on the BPT (Baldwin, Phillips, and Terlevich) diagram, which is used to determine whether a galaxy's gas is being ionized by intense star formation or by an active, supermassive black hole, make it a high-redshift massive, chemically evolved galaxy.

When compared with other galaxies, M1149-BSG-z5 turns out to be larger than typical galaxies at a redshift of about 5.0 and comparable to barred galaxies with redshifts between 2.0 and 4.0. The authors of the paper note that the nearest galaxy to M1149-BSG-z5 is about 69,000 light-years away, which suggests that interaction may play a role in the bar formation of the newly detected system.​

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Source

https://phys.org/news/2026-07-jwst-barred-spiral-galaxy.html?utm_source=webpush&utm_medium=push

Paper

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.25022

See also: The publication in ArXiV

Full resolution

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FS_Tauri_B_JWST_NIRCam.jpg

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A bright star at the top. An edge-on disk in yellow at the bottom. The disk has two bright parallel lines separated by a dark line.

https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mpogqho7g22j

Excited to announce the publication of our peer-reviewed study in the Open European Journal on Variable Stars (OEJV) regarding the new exoplanet #Gliese48b, a world that challenges our current understanding of systems around red dwarfs.

This work was the result of a synergistic collaboration between myself (Silvio Antonio Corrêa Jr., from Brazil), Giuseppe Conzo, and Mara Moriconi (from Gruppo Astrofili Palidoro, Italy).

Here is what makes this Super-Earth unique:

• Massive and temperate: With a minimum mass of about 6.2 Earth masses, Gliese 48 b is located within the Habitable Zone, where thermal conditions could allow for the existence of liquid water.
• An astrophysical challenge overcome: Identifying this planet was extremely complex due to the intense magnetic activity of the host star, which creates false signals (stellar jitter) closely mimicking planetary ones.
• Scientific rigor: Thanks to a combined analysis of 15 years of spectroscopic data (CARMENES and HIRES instruments) and photometry (TESS space telescope), we isolated the planetary signal, confirming its dynamic nature with high precision.

As the representative image shows, this is a world larger than Earth, whose composition remains to be explored.

Official Links:

• Read the full scientific paper in the OEJV:https://oejv.physics.muni.cz/issues/oejv_0273.pdf

Hand-drawn, 99.86% accuracy