Spying Water Ice Crystals, And Confirming Them -- In A Itty-Bitty Ring System, More than Two Billion Miles Out In The Inky Night Skies.

Despite the troublesome original naming of it, this is an extraordinary new science instrument. [We will generally refer to it as the "next gen" space telescope, as ever.]

It must be said though: its observations are already revolutionizing what we may see, and with astonishing. . . precision. See at right. This little world floats in a hazy "snow storm" / or an endless sea-wash, of sleet -- made up of tiny water ice crystals. That is now a. . . proven fact.

Do go read it all -- but with water ice crystals like this turning up almost everywhere we look (by highly sensitive spectral analysis). . . we must come to accept the notion that it is a near certainty. . . we are not the only life forms in the known Universe.

. . .Most of the reflected light in the spectrum is from Chariklo itself: Models suggest the observed ring area as seen from Webb during these observations is likely one-fifth the area of the body itself. [The next gen 'scope's] high sensitivity, in combination with detailed models, may permit us to tease out the signature of the ring material distinct from that of Chariklo. Pinilla-Alonso commented that “by observing Chariklo with [the 'scope] over several years as the viewing angle of the rings changes, we may be able to isolate the contribution from the rings themselves. . . .”

[These] Chariklo [observations. . .] open the door to a new means of characterizing small objects in the distant solar system in the coming years. With [the 'scope's] high sensitivity and infrared capability, scientists can use the unique science return offered by occultations, and enhance these measurements with near-contemporaneous spectra. Such tools will be tremendous assets to the scientists studying distant small bodies in our solar system. . . .

In an observational feat of high precision, scientists used a new technique with NASA’s [Next Gen] Space Telescope to capture the shadows of starlight cast by the thin rings of Chariklo. Chariklo is an icy, small body, but the largest of the known Centaur population, located more than two billion miles away beyond the orbit of Saturn. Chariklo is only 160 miles (250 kilometers) or ~51 times smaller than Earth in diameter, and its rings orbit at a distance of about 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the center of the body. . . .

So. . . that's like being able to clearly resolve a single pea, floating along on Lake Michigan, from the international space station, and detecting that a translucent spider has affixed a web of silk to it, only a few centimeters outside the pea skin -- and noticing that this spider. . . is hitching a ride over to Mackinac Island. Wild.

What a time to be alive, and so exciting that water ice crystals. . . are found essentially everywhere we look -- and so, life too must be somewhere, out there. Whoosh.

नमस्ते