February 2023

Minutes of the Arts Legacy Committee meeting of February 4, 2023 are available to read and view.
Descriptions of webinars to be presented at the 55th reunion by Warren Cooke and Noel Augustyn are posted on the Class Webinars page.

Scroll down to learn more about this month's featured image from the James Webb Space Telescope and to see more site updates.

Click on the image to enlarge

Collage of spiral galaxies — This collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light is at once overwhelming and awe-inspiring. “Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “They’re mind blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.” Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured millions of stars in these images. Older stars appear blue here, and are clustered at the galaxies’ cores. The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observations highlight glowing dust, showing where it exists around and between stars – appearing in shades of red and orange. Stars that haven’t yet fully formed and are encased in gas and dust appear bright red. Webb’s high-resolution images are the first to show large, spherical shells in the gas and dust in such exquisite detail. These holes may have been created by stars that exploded and carved out giant regions in the interstellar material. Another eye-catching detail? Several galaxy cores are awash in pink-and-red diffraction spikes. These are clear signs that these galaxies may have central active supermassive black holes or central star clusters. These spiral galaxies are Webb’s first big batch of contributions to the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, that includes existing images and data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). With Webb’s images, researchers can now examine these galaxies in ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and radio light.

The featured images on this and other site update pages are taken from the James Webb Telescope images page. Click here to see many more images on the Webb Space Telescope page.

Recent Site Updates

October 2024

Topics Updated

Class Projects, Meeting Minutes, Obituary, Reunion Report, Travelogue

Click here to open the monthly update details page. On the details page you will also have access to all monthly updates back to January 2023.

August 2024

Topics Updated

Meeting Minutes, Reunion Announcement

Click here to open the monthly update details page. On the details page you will also have access to all monthly updates back to January 2023.