Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Each year NASA puts out a call to the astro community to say “please send us your proposals for what you’d like to use JWST for” and you have to write a very detailed document justifying the science case and how you'd use it, they all get ranked by a panel and the top ones get awarded time to use JWST. I had a quick look through the list of successful proposals to see what jumped out at me, as usual there’s lots of exoplanet science including many proposals to characterise rocky planets especially super-Earths like 55 Cancri e which gets a lot of mirror time this year. The ongoing mystery of the “little red dot” galaxies in the distant universe dominate the galaxies studies, with TWELVE separate proposals all awarded time to study them. But there’s also a lot of solar system science awarded time as well, with studies on Europa and asteroids in our solar system too...
Check out the list of successful projects yourself here: https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/general-observers/cycle-5-go
@NASA @spacetelescopevision @NASAWebbTelescope
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about black holes, cosmology, dark matter, the early universe, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the biggest unsolved mysteries in astrophysics. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
Each year NASA puts out a call to the astro community to say “please send us your proposals for what you’d like to use JWST for” and you have to write a very detailed document justifying the science case and how you'd use it, they all get ranked by a panel and the top ones get awarded time to use JWST. I had a quick look through the list of successful proposals to see what jumped out at me, as usual there’s lots of exoplanet science including many proposals to characterise rocky planets especially super-Earths like 55 Cancri e which gets a lot of mirror time this year. The ongoing mystery of the “little red dot” galaxies in the distant universe dominate the galaxies studies, with TWELVE separate proposals all awarded time to study them. But there’s also a lot of solar system science awarded time as well, with studies on Europa and asteroids in our solar system too...
Check out the list of successful projects yourself here: https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/general-observers/cycle-5-go
@NASA @spacetelescopevision @NASAWebbTelescope
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about black holes, cosmology, dark matter, the early universe, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the biggest unsolved mysteries in astrophysics. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
