Window on the Universe
LONDON, UK
12 JULY
This stunning image beamed to Earth by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals details of far-flung regions of the Milky Way that we've never seen before.
Launched on Christmas Day 2021, from a spaceport in French Guiana, the JWST is the largest telescope ever sent into space. It uses infrared light to show us stars that were previously obscured from view by dust. Its first images, broadcast here to crowds in Piccadilly Circus, London, show the edge of a star-forming region around 7,600 light-years from Earth, in the Carina Nebula, which is home to stars millions of times brighter than our Sun.
Hole at the heart of the Galaxy
EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE
12 MAY
You would have thought if there was a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Galaxy, we'd have noticed it before. But that's the thing about black holes: you can't see them. You can only seethe gas whirling around them. The one at the centre of the Milky Way, named Sagittarius A*, is around 27,000 light-years away from Earth and we only found it by training eight radio telescopes on it all at the same time. It took 300 researchers and their supercomputers five years to analyse
