17 Jan Our Galileo moment

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Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios

Answers to age-old questions about the nearly 14 billion years of cosmic history are closer than ever, Axios’ Miriam Kramer and Alison Snyder write.

• “We’re in a whole new era of astrophysics and planetary science,” NASA scientist Stefanie Milam told Axios. “What we are seeing — even in our first glimpses — with the James Webb Space Telescope has just blown our mind. It surpassed our expectations in so many ways.”

The year’s watershed moments included the long-awaited first images sent from the Webb telescope, and a portrait of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

• The Webb telescope, which launched one year ago, delivered unprecedented images of stellar and galactic births — yielding new details about the evolving structure of early galaxies, and the first stars to turn on in the universe.

The telescope also has started looking at the atmospheres of planets far from our own.

The first image, released in May, of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Image: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration via Reuters

The Event Horizon Telescope captured images of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

• “Our Galileo moment is seeing inside of black holes,” Milam, the NASA scientist, told us. “We’re studying star formation in ways that we’ve never been able to see.”