Lee Feinberg

NASA’s First-Ever Alien-Hunting Space Telescope Could Enlighten Our New Dark Age The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earth-like planets are common—if it can get off the ground

www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-...

Wonderful article. Honored to be part of this.

I remember the day Drake Deming's Spitzer transit result was released and we were all like OMG JWST can do transits of exoplanets. And then the day during commissioning where we got the first transit and it was amazing and we were all like omg.

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been

science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla...

optics.org/news/16/8/6

Towards the Habitable World Observatory - Monday Session 2 YouTube video by STScI Research

www.youtube.com/live/Wuyxgs6...

Finally posting my talk on the HWO Approach and Architecture Status from the incredibly productive conference last week. It's the first talk here and shares our next 2 architectures being studied.

what a week for our future✨ #HWO25
🧵coming soon🔭🧪☄️
@mmacgreg.bsky.social @hbhammel.bsky.social @bmacastro.bsky.social @dawngelino.bsky.social
@aussiastronomer.bsky.social @stsci.edu @aura-astronomy.bsky.social @justtheletteru.bsky.social @vividreams.bsky.social @leefeinberg.bsky.social +500 others

Wow.

These are aurorae, dancing high in the atmosphere.

Of Jupiter.

From #JWST

It's all a continuum

It

ESA is organising at Town Hall on the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) at 2pm CEST on Fri 16 May. For registration and further details see: www.cosmos.esa.int/web/hwo_town...

Tedeschi Trucks

Artist's impression of the exoplanet K2-18b. Credit: A. Smith, University of Cambridge.

𝗡𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲.

K2-18b is back in the news, now with a bold claim that biosignature molecules (DMS and/or DMDS) have been 'detected at 3σ'.

Most exoplanet astronomers are extremely sceptical about these claims, let's see why (1/n).

🔭🧪🪐 #exoplanet

Model-based tip-tilt correction for segmented mirror of space telescope using extended beacon A model-based tip-tilt correction method using extended beacons is proposed for aligning the segmented mirror of space telescopes. This method is base…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paper out of China this month.

Worth the free registration😀. www.electrooptics.com/article/how-...

Graphic showing the positions of Webb’s four science instruments behind the telescope’s primary mirror. On the left half, under the title “Webb’s Science Instruments,” is a line drawing of the underside of Webb's mirror. A gold rectangle outlines the position of the science instruments. On the right half of the graphic is a blown-up and more detailed illustration of the four science instruments: NIRSpec, FGS/NIRISS, NIRCam, and MIRI.

Each of #NASAWebb’s four instruments are able to answer specific science questions. Three instruments have cameras, but all four can perform spectroscopy, which is used to study the details of what wavelengths of light objects emit or absorb: webbtelescope.pub/3uJUKoW 🔭 🧪

Yesterday was paper day!

With deep JWST data from the ALT survey we provide new independent evidence that the new population of faint AGNs in the early Universe seems to have so-called overly massive black holes compared to their stellar mass
arxiv.org/abs/2412.02846

Another big #nasa Roman milestone! The sunshade was just recently installed! Heading towards launch in less than two years www.nasa.gov/universe/nas...

Sad to hear. Got to know Glen on Hubble SM2 and had a ton of respect for him.

“Think of #habitableworldsobservatory as a #superhubble... capable of.. transformative astrophysics” said Arney, “as well as.. the 1st observatory ever designed to search for signs of life on planets outside of our solar system.”#exoplanets www.thespacereview.com/article/4930/1 🔭@jfoust.bsky.social

OK, since the cat's out of the bag (and we're official) I'm happy to report we were granted time to use JWST to look at #2024YR4 and measure its size in about a month. :) 🔭🛰️

False colour JWST NIRCam image of a nearby star forming region in front of a deep back ground of colorful galaxies. NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

Oh come ON now. This new JWST image is just ASTOUNDING.

I feel like I’m falling looking into it, and that I would fall forever, and that I would enjoy it.

NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

At so many levels..

The Habitable Worlds Observatory project office will share its plans this morning at the 10AM HWO Special Session followed by HWO Project Scientist Dr Giada Arney's "Search for Life" Plenary talk!

A rare look at NASA’s next sharp-eyed space telescope NASA's Roman Space Telescope is preparing for launch in 2027, with a mission to study distant galaxies and explore dark energy.

www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/jou...

Special edition JATIS for HWO technology call is out...

Join the community...

Support NASA JPL HabWorlds teammates in the Pasadena fires www.gofundme.com/f/support-na... #NASA #NASAJpl #Astronomy #astrobiology

Join us at these HWO events at the AAS...plus the PAGs and other related posters and talks. Lots to share!

A takeaway for me from your plot is that even with noiseless detectors, shot noise will be a limitation....on HWO we can use high SNR active and drift controls (eg edge sensing) to minimize the dofs that psf subtr corrects.

I was using 10-15um for Miri but I see it was a bit shorter than that...stable regardless!