Space Telescope Science Institute
Every Cosmic Herald story on Space Telescope Science Institute — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Science & Discovery
JWST Survey Finds Some of the Universe's Most Massive Galaxies May Be Missing Their Central Black Holes
A JWST/NIRSpec study of eight ultramassive galaxies finds that sheer size doesn't guarantee a giant black hole — one galaxy shows a stellar velocity dip, not a peak, hinting its central black hole may have been kicked out entirely.
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Science & Discovery
JWST's Rocky Worlds Program Delivers Its First Complete Verdict: GJ 3929 b Is a Bare, Airless Rock
Four stacked JWST/MIRI eclipses of the super-Earth GJ 3929 b rule out thick CO2 or water atmospheres at high confidence, giving the Rocky Worlds program its first finished case file — and a warm, dark rock instead of a habitable world.
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Science & Discovery
Hubble Catches a Tiny Galaxy Burning Off the Cosmic Fog, 1.4 Billion Years After the Big Bang
Astronomers used Hubble to catch ionizing UV light escaping a small, furiously star-forming galaxy in the reionization epoch — the first such detection, and direct evidence for how the early universe became transparent.
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Science & Discovery
A nearby dwarf galaxy is a blueprint for the universe's first dust
Webb found unexpected dust-making in Sextans A, a chemically primitive dwarf galaxy — evidence that the earliest galaxies could forge solid grains by pathways unlike those that dominate today.
