Berkowitz Rachel

For UCLA extragalactic astronomer Tommaso Treu, the opportunity to lead one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST’s) first observing programs wasn’t just a chance to live out his undergraduate dreams of glimpsing the oldest galaxies in the universe. It was also an opportunity to try out the most sophisticated telescope ever sent into space. JWST’s technical capabilities have, on many levels, exceeded expectations.

Venus’s extreme greenhouse effect pushes surface temperatures to 460 °C—hot enough to melt lead. But the planet’s dense clouds, located at an altitude of about 50–70 km, are a balmy 20 °C. In 2020 Cardiff University’s Jane Greaves and colleagues presented the first evidence for the presence of phosphine (PH3) gas in Venus’s upper atmosphere.

To better understand the accelerating expansion of the universe, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) constructed an interferometric radio telescope. The signals collected by the instrument since its first light in 2017 are being used to reconstruct a three-dimensional map of hydrogen density, which is one way to measure the universe’s expansion.