America now has more breweries than ever. And that might be a problem.

in the District and Baltimore last fall, and the citrusy Nanticoke Nectar IPA became a hit. “Nectar sold so well that [bars] believe in us,” says co-founder Chris Brohawn, “and that gets our foot in the door” when they’re trying to get bars to carry a saison or a seasonal beer. About 85 percent of the beer RAR makes leaves the premises. Still, with an increasing number of local breweries fighting for the same oxygen, Brohawn knows buzz can be fleeting. This year, RAR plans to stay in the spotlight by releasing limited-edition beers in cans at its brewpub “monthly, if not bi-weekly,” Brohawn says. RAR has experimented with placing local radio and print ads, but he says the social-media buzz surrounding a beer release “increases the word-of-mouth tenfold.” In national surveys conducted by the Brewers Association, 67 percent of craft beer drinkers said it was important to them that their beer be locally made, while 61 percent said it was important that the brewery was independent. Meanwhile, the craft category is growing faster than the total beer market, and in 2014 reached a double-digit (11 percent) share of the marketplace by volume. Those trends aren’t lost on Terry Haley, vice president for marketing at World of Beer, which has 77 craft-focused locations along the Eastern Seaboard and throughout the South. Haley says his company tries to make sure local and craft regional beers are well represented among the roughly 50 taps found at each tavern, even though “there’s definitely a point of emphasis to have what we call ‘craft’ beers across the major styles: Stone, Lagunitas; here in Tampa, Cigar City’s Jai Alai [IPA]. You have to have some of these standbys.” Customers Jeff Babka, left, and Steve DeBacco at the World of Beer bar and restaurant in Arlington in August. Each restaurant in the chain has about 50 taps that always include a mix of local and regional beers. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post) Of the 50 drafts at World of Beer in Arlington last week, 12 were from the DMV. They included 3 Stars, Parkway, Oliver and Escutcheon, as well as the more widely distributed Devils Backbone and Flying Dog. Other World of Beer locations had a similar ratio: 14 of 46 drafts in Atlanta came from Georgia; Louisville’s 50 taps included 11 Kentucky or Indiana beers. Brewers Association economist Bart Watson called the number of brewery

Bartender Corey Faircloth fills a glass at Spacebar, a bar in Falls Church, Va., that sells 24 craft beers on tap and 20 kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches. (Evy Mages/For The Washington Post)
I
The new number includes giant Budweiser, artisan Dogfish Head and your neighborhood brewpub. Although beer industry observers have known this day was coming, the pace of growth was explosive: At the end of 2011, there were 2,033 breweries, or fewer than half as many as now. In 2005, there were only 1,447. And 25 years ago? The Brewers Association, a trade group for small and independent breweries, logged a mere 284 in 1990.
So this is a golden age for beer lovers. It is easier than ever to find a great IPA (the most popular craft beer style in America), stout or session ale at a bar or liquor store. Previously ignored styles such as gose and Berliner weisse have become trendy, while brewers have a free hand to experiment with Belgian IPAs or saisons packed with unusual herbs.
On the other hand, the expanding market — at least two breweries open every day — has created a new set of problems for brewers. New arrivals, riding the craft beer wave, are finding it difficult to stand out. And it’s not as if bars have doubled the number of their taps in the past five years. So not only do the new breweries need to squeeze past their rivals even to make it in front of consumers, but they might need to convince bars that they’re more deserving of a chance than better-known beers from Lagunitas or Great Lakes.
Graham MacDonald, left, and Matt Humbard launched Handsome Beer at Washington-area bars in Sept. 2015. (From Handsome Beer)
Graham MacDonald, the co-founder of Washington’s new Handsome Beer, estimates that his beers have been sold at around 140 bars, restaurants and stores in the District and Maryland since last fall. Even so, he describes the process of getting into those establishments as “a bit of a challenge.”
“There’s been a huge influx of breweries who’ve come to market in the last year,” he says. “Only two or three years ago . . . it was easy to go in and say, ‘Here’s a new IPA, here’s a new pale ale, here’s a new stout.’ But now it’s not just the other new guys who are making the same thing; it’s all the other established breweries.”
The sentiment is the same on the other side of the bar. “Picking the draft list has become exponentially harder than it was two or three years ago,” says Jace Gonnerman, beer director for the District’s Meridian Pint, Brookland Pint and Smoke and Barrel. “You have to balance styles, but how many spots do I have for national breweries? What local breweries do I want to focus on?
“Every time a local brewery opens making really, really high-quality beer, it pushes a national brewery off. We keep a good mix of national breweries on, because people are looking for that. But you have to say no to people way more than you say yes.”
Bartender Ben Brown pours from the tap at Pint on a recent Friday night. The restaurant's general manager, Drew Swift, says half of the bar's draft beers come from breweries located within a 60-mile radius of the establishment. (Lexey Swall/For The Washington Post)
Even when they are given a chance, some small brewers have expressed frustration with the way beer bars order products. Instead of buying three kegs of a new beer and running through them all, as it might have done when local beers were a novelty, a bar tends to buy a keg and, once it’s empty, fill the draft line with a competitor’s product, and then another one, and so on, before rotating back to the first brewery’s beer weeks or months later.
Dave Delaplaine of Roofers Union in Adams Morgan, which regularly swaps beers on and off 16 of its 22 draft lines, defends the practice. “That’s what the culture of the beer world is: In order to have really fun beers, these crazy one-offs, you have to change a lot,” he says. “Breweries are approaching it as an art and want to try new things. I’d take that any day: That’s what got people to try their beer in the first place.”
When brewer Jason zumBrunnen and his partners began planning Ratio Beerworks in Denver’s River North district, they knew what they were up against. “I think we’ve had 10 breweries open in the neighborhood since 2010,” zumBrunnen says. “Colorado is the forefront of craft beer in general. Making great beer is just the barrier to entry. Five years before us, opening a brewery was a very cool thing to do. The difference now is the amount of brands. There’s a finite number of tap handles at Falling Rock or Euclid Hall,” two Denver beer bars known for outstanding craft selections.
Ratio’s business plan didn’t rely on getting beer bars to put their French-style saison and Scotch ale on tap. Instead, it called for 90 percent of all sales to take place onsite. The brewery built a modern-industrial taproom that encouraged lingering, and it made deals with local music promoters to host acoustic performances and meet-and-greets with bands. For outside the brewery, Ratio made arrangements with a handful of modern restaurants and beer bars, “not necessarily the fastest-moving accounts,” zumBrunnen says, “but establishing the kinds of place we wanted to be in,” so that customers at those places think, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of them, I’ll go check out the taproom.’ ”
Luke Stanton, 21, and Brennan Ewing, 22, visit RAR Brewing in Cambridge, Md. Most of the company’s beers leave the premises to be sold elsewhere. (File photo by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
RAR Brewing, which opened as a brewpub in Cambridge, Md., in the summer of 2013, took the opposite approach. It began distributing its beers around the Eastern Shore and eventually in the District and Baltimore last fall, and the citrusy Nanticoke Nectar IPA became a hit. “Nectar sold so well that [bars] believe in us,” says co-founder Chris Brohawn, “and that gets our foot in the door” when they’re trying to get bars to carry a saison or a seasonal beer. About 85 percent of the beer RAR makes leaves the premises.
Still, with an increasing number of local breweries fighting for the same oxygen, Brohawn knows buzz can be fleeting. This year, RAR plans to stay in the spotlight by releasing limited-edition beers in cans at its brewpub “monthly, if not bi-weekly,” Brohawn says. RAR has experimented with placing local radio and print ads, but he says the social-media buzz surrounding a beer release “increases the word-of-mouth tenfold.”
Many in the beer industry pin their hopes for small breweries on localization: the idea that consumers would rather drink beers made down the road than across the country. Lary Hoffman, who co-owns Galaxy Hut in Arlington and Spacebar in Falls Church with his wife, Erica, prefers to stock most of the taps with Virginia breweries, such as Blue Mountain, Champion and Three Notch’d. “You can get any style of beer locally now, and the quality is on par with the best beer in the world, so why not seek out the regional option?” he asks. A handful of national brands, including Bell’s and Avery, show up on the 28 taps at Galaxy Hut and the 24 at Spacebar, but they’re the exception. Customers would be angry “if our draft lineup looked like a Safeway shelf,” Hoffman says.
In national surveys conducted by the Brewers Association, 67 percent of craft beer drinkers said it was important to them that their beer be locally made, while 61 percent said it was important that the brewery was independent. Meanwhile, the craft category is growing faster than the total beer market, and in 2014 reached a double-digit (11 percent) share of the marketplace by volume.
Those trends aren’t lost on Terry Haley, vice president for marketing at World of Beer, which has 77 craft-focused locations along the Eastern Seaboard and throughout the South. Haley says his company tries to make sure local and craft regional beers are well represented among the roughly 50 taps found at each tavern, even though “there’s definitely a point of emphasis to have what we call ‘craft’ beers across the major styles: Stone, Lagunitas; here in Tampa, Cigar City’s Jai Alai [IPA]. You have to have some of these standbys.”
Customers Jeff Babka, left, and Steve DeBacco at the World of Beer bar and restaurant in Arlington in August. Each restaurant in the chain has about 50 taps that always include a mix of local and regional beers. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)
Of the 50 drafts at World of Beer in Arlington last week, 12 were from the DMV. They included 3 Stars, Parkway, Oliver and Escutcheon, as well as the more widely distributed Devils Backbone and Flying Dog. Other World of Beer locations had a similar ratio: 14 of 46 drafts in Atlanta came from Georgia; Louisville’s 50 taps included 11 Kentucky or Indiana beers.
Brewers Association economist Bart Watson called the number of brewery openings “pretty incredible,” but he points out that America isn’t exactly saturated with beer makers: In a 2014 article, he noted that the United States has fewer breweries per capita than the United Kingdom, Germany or Latvia. Last summer, after the number of breweries hit 4,000, Watson calculated that “there are also nearly 1,000 cities with a population of more than 10,000 that don’t have a local brewery yet, and numerous neighborhoods in larger cities without a local brewpub or taproom.”
Other markets are hyper-competitive. Mike Sardina, president of the San Diego Brewers Guild, says that while there are at least 100 breweries in the county, there are also plenty of bars that will give a shot to newcomers. “But the beer has to be killer from a quality perspective, and the angle has to be that it’s not just another pale ale,” he says. “These bars support San Diego craft beer to a degree that they’ll bring in any new beer, but if it’s not up to par, it’s tough to get a second chance.”
That law-of-the-jungle competitiveness will guide whether or not new breweries make it, says Scot Blair, owner of San Diego’s Hamilton’s Tavern, a fixture on national “Best Beer Bar” lists, and the Monkey Paw and South Park breweries, both of which have been honored at the Great American Beer Festival. “Local doesn’t mean better,” he says. “The emphasis has to be on making good beer. We have maybe 110 breweries in San Diego. We were better when we had less breweries, because we were focused more on quality. It’s like real estate. Everybody jumps on when it’s a bubble.”
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Find information on homebrewing beer and its increasing popularity.

Homebrewing beer has been legal in the United States since the 1970's. It's popularity increases each year. Some brewers have been using locally grown ingredients and have increased their output so much that they have turned their former hobby into profitable businesses. The Capitol region is a thriving area for homebrewers and microbrewers.  Find information on the growth of homebrewing. Keep the results limited to American only, any mention of a non-American brewery/beer is irrelevant.

Research the expansion of a specific hobby into a business for this question.

The booming industry that veterans are tapping into

Heritage Brewing co-founder Sean Arroyo, above, started the brewery with his brother Ryan, who like him is a veteran. They launched the business on New Year’s Eve 2013. (Andre Chung/for The Washington Post)
Casey Jones had a career in the Coast Guard before founding Fair Winds Brewing in Lorton. He says running a brew house is “very consistent with my military experience.” (Andre Chung/for The Washington Post)
Veterans have always been involved in the brewing industry, going back to the early days of the republic. These days, though, they’re more visible than ever, thanks to veteran-owned breweries with names such as Service, Honor and Young Veterans, and as liquor stores and bars across the country stock beers called Freedom Isn’t Free IPA, Devil Dog Stout or Boot Camp Brown Ale.
There are no hard numbers to track the number of veterans starting their own breweries: The Brewers Association, a national trade association for craft breweries, doesn’t track or ask about the service of brewery founders, says director Paul Gatza, but there’s no question that interest is growing. The annual Craft Brewers Conference, which draws more than 10,000 industry professionals to a different city each year, included a “Veterans Roundtable” this year for the first time, allowing brewers who’d served in any branch of the military to network, talk shop and trade advice.
In many ways, it makes sense that veterans would be drawn to brewing: As of Nov. 30, there were 4,144 breweries in America, the highest number in the country’s history and double the number in 2011. At the same time, the downsizing of the military means more veterans are looking for work and getting help through such organizations as the Jonas Project, a nonprofit group that helps turn veterans into entrepreneurs.
“A lot of us joined the military because it’s not just sitting in a cubicle, typing on a keyboard,” explains Casey Jones, the founder of Lorton’s 10-month-old Fair Winds Brewing, who graduated from the Coast Guard Academy and later became an instructor there. “For me, it was being out on ships. For others, it was being in the outdoors, mountaineering, or being active. We like to be doing different things. Here, we call ourselves brewers, but one day we’re brewing, the next day we focus on cellaring, the next day we’re working on packaging. That’s very consistent with my military experience.”
The tap room at Heritage Brewing is set up inside the Manassas brew house. Heritage also has a bar on the concourse at Verizon Center. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
Sean Arroyo and his brother Ryan, founders of Heritage Brewing in Manassas, both joined the military but “had always talked about starting a brewery,” Sean Arroyo says. “We thought, ‘We’ll do 20 years, get out and do the brewery.’ Our military retirement, if you will.” But after four years in the Marines, during which time he began home-brewing, Sean Arroyo joined the Army National Guard and began working on a business degree. He later got a job in finance but realized “the financial world wasn’t for me.” He thought about joining the FBI, “but then sequestration happened.” He took that as a sign that he and his brother, who remains on active duty, “should go and do what we’re passionate about.”
Heritage opened on New Year’s Eve 2013 and has experienced “100 percent growth year over year,” Arroyo says, with hundreds of bars and liquor stores stocking Freedom Isn’t Free and Kings Mountain Scotch Ale. At the beginning of hockey season, Heritage opened a bar on the concourse at Verizon Center, offering a highly visible outlet for its beers.
In Virginia, the growing number of breweries owned and run by veterans includes Young Veterans in Virginia Beach, Bold Mariner in Norfolk and Fidelis Beer, which is based in Burke but brews its beers under contract at Beltway Brewing in Sterling.
Ian Schuster, the founder of the Schubros Brewery in San Ramon, Calif., and a Naval Academy graduate who served in Iraq and Kosovo, says similar breweries are sprouting up all over the country. Schuster led the roundtable discussion at the Craft Brewers Conference, where he met representatives from 30 breweries, from Key West to Seattle.
Heritage Brewing’s Sean Arroyo works on an experimental batch. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
In October, Schuster and a group of veterans who’d met over beers at the CBC founded the nonprofit Veterans Beer Alliance. Schuster wants it to be a way for veteran-owned business to network or potentially share costs. As an example, he cites a conversation he had with Jeff Dieringer of the Fort Washington-based beer distributors DOPS. “The first 15 minutes was all about beer. The rest was what he did in the Army, what I did in the Navy,” Schuster says. Schubros recently reached an agreement to have DOPS handle the brewery’s upcoming launch in the District, Maryland and Delaware, thanks in large part to the connection between Schuster and Dieringer. “There’s a level of trust right off the bat,” Schuster says. “We understand each other’s history.”
If breweries with veteran ties are becoming more visible, it’s due in large part to the marketing, including the names of breweries and beers. Many breweries play up their connections for a simple reason: “No matter where we go, there are people who relate to veterans,” says Kevin Ryan, a West Point graduate who opened Service Brewing in Savannah, Ga., in 2014. “Their dad served or their next-door neighbor served or their grandfather was a vet.” Service’s beers include Rally Point Pilsner and Battlewagon Double IPA, but it also tries to appeal to non-veterans: The brewery’s motto, “How do you serve?” is featured on a large chalkboard in its tasting room, and visitors are invited to add their own response.
For Thomas Wilder and Neil McCanon, high school friends who opened Young Veterans Brewing in Virginia Beach in 2013 after serving in the Army National Guard and the Army and Army Reserve, respectively, their name is a response to a more existential question. One day, while working on a construction job he hated, Wilder asked himself, “‘Who are Neil and I? Who do we hope to represent?’ Well, we’re young veterans.”
Despite their adoption of the name, Wilder and McCanon, both of whom completed tours in Iraq, say they’re conscious that they walk a fine line. When you use the word “veterans,” McCanon says, “you represent a wide spectrum of people. In our labeling and our choice of names, we try not to overrepresent our military or our patriotism.”
“We try very hard not to wave flags or use red, white and blue on the labels,” Wilder adds. Instead, they use olive drab and labels styled as World War II propaganda posters to evoke what Wilder calls “the Greatest Generation feeling. It’s military, but it’s also nostalgic.”
At Fair Winds Brewing in Lorton, brew master Charlie Buettner and brewer Jill Yoffe clean a tank. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
Others agree: Ian Schuster says he heard from some veterans at the CBC roundtable who are concerned that breweries with overly militaristic names looked as if they were cashing in on their military service. Arroyo, of Heritage, served in Iraq but says that he and his brother initially discussed whether to tell anyone that they were veterans. “We’re happy with the exposure, but the much more important thing is making good beer. We want you to come out and have a great craft beer and say, ‘Oh, hey, these guys are veterans,’ not come out because we’re veterans.”
Whether or not they advertise their service, a tie that binds veteran-owned breweries is support for charitable causes. “One of the things that’s hard to root out of a military guy is that drive and that love of service to their country and community,” says Heritage’s Arroyo. “Any way that we can give back, whether that’s donating or doing an event, we’re happy to do it.”
Many specifically help organizations that help veterans. Every quarter, Service Brewing picks a different such charity to support. The brewery hosts a launch party for a new beer and donates a percentage of ticket and beer sales to its designated charity. Earlier this year, the beneficiary was Homes for Our Troops, which builds adapted homes for disabled veterans. After the fundraising, Service founder Kevin Ryan, who led two companies in Iraq, learned that “one of my soldiers from Iraq is going to be receiving a home from them this spring. It hammers home the importance of what we’re doing.”
Young Veterans hosts a monthly gathering at its brewery called Vet Noise, which uses beer sales, food trucks and live music to raise money for veteran-focused groups such as Fisher House and Dogs on Deployment. This month, the brewery held a food and supply drive for Vetshouse, which helps homeless veterans in Virginia Beach.
Fair Winds Brewing sells an assortment of beers in its tap room. Launched 10 months ago, it’s among a growing number of breweries owned and run by veterans. (Andre Chung/For The Washington Post)
Other partnerships are more traditional: Battlefield Brew Works in Gettysburg, Pa., donates all the proceeds from its Red Circle Ale to the Red Circle Foundation, which helps support the families of special forces members who have been wounded or killed.
The smaller breweries, like many others across the country, are finding out that the next challenge will be growth. Young Veterans has received plenty of buzz, especially after Semper Fi P.A. won a bronze medal in the Best IPA category at the 2015 Virginia Craft Brewers Cup, but its beers are hard to find outside its hometown. “We’ve gotten a reputation for being a little bit bigger than we are,” McCanon says. “We have a three-barrel brew house and do about a thousand barrels a year,” which is a drop in a bucket compared to Virginia competitors Devils Backbone or Champion, let alone the big boys.
Service Brewing is sold in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but Ryan says he regularly receives distribution requests from members of the military farther afield. “They’ve been [stationed] at Fort Gordon or Fort Augusta, places where we’re now available, and they move on [to another posting], and they want to get your beer where they are now.”


No Savor tickets? Drink beer at these events instead.

Next week is the biggest week of the year for Washington's beer lovers. The catalyst is the annual Savor craft beer festival, which brings 76 of the country's top breweries to the National Building Museum on Friday and Saturday nights for tastings and seminars. All tickets for Savor sold out in around 30 minutes back in March, but if you didn't get them, don't worry: The real fun is found at the happy hours, brewer meet-and-greets and rare-beer events that spring up at D.C. beer bars. This is your chance meet Brooklyn Brewery founder Garrett Oliver or Sam Adams founder Jim Koch; try numerous rare beers from Founders or Stone; or sample Odell, Cigar City and other breweries that don't regularly show up on taps in this region. Dogfish Head Ale House in Fairfax will pour 16 Belgian-inspired beers from seven different breweries on May 10. (Photo by Evy Mages for The Washington Post) Starting Monday, we'll have a daily post with a rundown of the day's must-do beer tastings and events, most of which are free and require no reservations. But if you're planning ahead, some big events do require tickets. Here are six you might want to book now. The Ultimate Funkwerks Beer & Food Experience Where and when Founders Beer Brunch Where and when Belgium on the Beltway Where and when Third Annual Brewers Brunch Where and when Maine Beer Company Clam Bake Where and when All 'Ale the Ladies Meet-and-Greet Where and when


Celebrate D.C. Beer Week with crab feasts, tap takeovers and a scavenger hunt

DC Brau's annual all-you-can-eat crab feast at the Quarterdeck is one of the most popular events of DC Beer Week. (D.C. Beer Week)
DC Beer Week runs Aug. 9-16, and every night is packed with events: beer dinners, happy hours, crab feasts, and even a scavenger hunt through Dupont Circle. A longer list of events can be found on the official DC Beer Week Calendar.
Friday-Saturday, Aug. 7-8
Sunday, Aug. 9
Get to know 11 new local breweries at the Black Squirrel's New Kids on the Block tasting. Hellbender (D.C.) and Adroit Theory (Purcellville, Va.) are regularly seen at D.C. beer bars; Caboose (Vienna), Ornery (Woodbridge) and Mispillion River (Milford, Del.) are less common, while this is the D.C. debut of Jailbreak (Laurel) and an early chance to try a beer from Metropole (Arlington), which isn't even open yet. 4 p.m. to midnight. The Black Squirrel, 2427 18th St. NW. www.blacksquirreldc.com. Free admission.
Monday, Aug. 10
Tuesday, Aug. 11
If you enjoy a rich, strong barrel-aged beer, make your way to Boundary Stone for the second annual Battle of the Barrel-Aged Brews, where DC Brau is defending its title against competition from 3 Stars, Atlas, Hellbender and Port City. Small pours of each beer are included in the $20 ticket, along with an all-important ballot that lets you vote for the winner. Buying a ticket in advance helps avoid a sellout crowd. 5 to 8 p.m. Boundary Stone, 116 Rhode Island Ave. NW. www.boundarystonedc.com. $20.
Wednesday, Aug. 12
The DC Brewery Q&A at City Tap House, which features owners and brewers from 3 Stars, Atlas Brew Works, Bluejacket, DC Brau and Hellbender, promises to answer your questions about the local beer scene. RSVP to info@citytaphousedc.com.  After the panel ends, the Coast to Coast Tap Takeover at nearby RFD includes 45 beers from all over the country for $5 each until 11 p.m. DC Brewery Q&A: 6 to 8 p.m. at City Tap House, 901 I St. NW. www.citytaphousedc.com. Free admission. Coast to Coast Tap Takeover: Starts at 4 p.m. at RFD, 810 Seventh St. NW. www.lovethebeer.com. $5 cover charge to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Center.
Thursday, Aug. 13
If you have a craving for crustaceans and local brews, Smoke and Barrel is hosting an all-you-can-eat crab feast with two Eastern Shore breweries: RAR of Cambridge and Evolution of Salisbury. Each ticket includes crabs, corn on the cob, hush puppies, and unlimited pours of seven beers from each of the breweries from 6 to 8 p.m. Smoke and Barrel, 2471 18th St. NW. www.smokeandbarreldc.com. $65.
Ciders and meads
Friday, Aug. 14
Many of the events during DC Beer Week celebrate local beers, but part of the strength of the local beer scene is the ability to enjoy brews from around the country, if not the world. San Diego's Ballast Point has become a fixture on local taps this summer – its Grapefruit Sculpin IPA is the perfect marriage of a hoppy West Coast IPA and a quenching German radler – and ChurchKey is putting two dozen Ballast Point beers on tap and another four on draft for one night only. 4 p.m. to close. ChurchKey, 1337 14th St. NW. www.churchkeydc.com. Free admission.
Saturday, Aug. 15
The Old Ebbitt BrewHaHa pairs nine breweries, including Hardywood, Flying Dog and DC Brau, with one of nine chefs – maybe Michael Friedman of the Red Hen or Nathan Anda of Partisan and Red Apron Butchery. Each brewery picks two beers to serve, and the chef creates small bites to pair with them. The event runs from 8 to 11 p.m. and all food and drinks are included in the ticket price. 8 to 11 p.m. Old Ebbitt Grill, 675 15th St. NW. www.brewhaha2015.eventfarm.com. $65.
Sunday, Aug. 16


The site of a murder in northwest DC is for sale.

The upper northwest DC mansion where three members of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper Figueroa were murdered in October 2015 is for sale. Describe the size of the mansion, its condition, the sale price, the listing agent, and the buyer. Also of interest is whether the buyer moved into the house as is or completely refurbished the residence. Sale of comparable homes on Woodland Drive NW are pertinent. Details of the murder and subsequent trial are not relevant. Omit any references to Georgetown.

Find information online to answer this real estate question.

The D.C. area’s 10 most pricey house listings

Dramatic staircases, nine fireplaces and a 20-car driveway are among the features.
View Photo Gallery —A home gym, libraries and an indoor water feature are among the amenities in these pricey properties.
With the help of Rockville-based multiple-listing service MRIS, we compiled a list of some of the most expensive houses for sale in the Washington area.
The properties range from a $12.9 million chateau set in the woods of McLean to a $3.99 million estate in Great Falls modeled on Shirley Plantation on the James River. Other properties on the list include a 19th-century mansion and a sleek contemporary condo that is under construction.
(Sean Shanahan)
• 801 Turkey Run Rd., McLean
$12.9 million
Agent: Deborah Shapiro and Michael Anastasia, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
Inspired by the Chateau Chambord in France, this home — more than 14,000 square feet — rests on more than two acres surrounded by a forest. The estate has five bedrooms, seven full baths and four half baths. It also has a lower-level full bar and wine cellar in a grotto-like setting, an outdoor kitchen and entertaining space, a swimming pool and parking for five cars. To read more about this home, click here.
(Courtesy of HomeVisit)
• 3120 Woodland Drive NW, Washington
$8.1 million
Agent: Marc Fleisher, Long & Foster Real Estate
This elegant brick Georgian-style home in Massachusetts Avenue Heights features formal and informal entertaining spaces, including a formal dining room, a formal living room and a sunroom wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows. Upstairs is a charming library with an arched opening to the upper-level gallery. The private half-acre lot includes a swimming pool.
(Courtesy of HomeVisit)
• 7700 Oldchester Rd., Bethesda
$7.2 million
Agent: Marc Fleisher, Long & Foster Real Estate
This estate, custom built by Sandy Spring Builders in 2009, has more than 12,000 square feet of living space with seven bedrooms and eight baths. Special features include an indoor waterfall feature, two custom-milled libraries, a morning room with stone walls and a fireplace, a spacious sunroom that provides year-round indoor-outdoor living and a lower level with a basketball court, a gym, a spa bath and guest quarters.
(Courtesy of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty)
• 2615 30th St. NW, Washington
$6.75 million
Agent: Jonathan Taylor, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
This Colonial-style stone home in Massachusetts Avenue Heights has nearly 9,000 finished square feet, including a grand foyer that leads into large entertaining spaces. The home has five bedrooms, six full baths, two half baths, a large kitchen and breakfast area, a library and a graceful formal dining room with arched doorways. The master suite features his-and-hers baths and a dressing room, while the finished lower level includes a dining area with a glass block wall. The grounds include a swimming pool and an unusual whirlpool tub set in a stone grotto.
(Courtesy of BTW Images)
• 3911 Bradley Lane, Chevy Chase, Md.
$5.2 million
Agent: Hans Wydler, Long & Foster Real Estate
This circa 1895 estate, which rests on 1.34 acres, has been updated throughout yet retains its original architectural detail and a floor plan suited for grand entertaining and intimate gatherings. The home has nine bedrooms, 10 baths and nearly 12,000 square feet of living space, including a receiving room, formal living room, great room, dining room and solarium. The spacious grounds include a swimming pool, terraces and a deep shaded porch.
(Courtesy of HomeVisit)
• 9325 Belle Terre Way, Potomac
$4.995 million
Agent: Kimberly Casey and Daryl Judy, Washington Fine Properties
The original Belle Terre Estate, built in 1942, is a renovated classic European house set on more than two acres. The grounds include lawns, terraces, two large guesthouses with a total of five bedrooms and five baths, a swimming pool and pool house and a sport court. The main house, which has approximately 7,700 square feet, has five bedrooms, four full baths, two half baths and spaces for entertaining formally and informally such as a sunroom, family room, living room and dining room. The home has an office on the main level as well as a second office on the loft level.
(Courtesy of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty)
• 4901 Hampden Lane, Bethesda
$4.845 million
Agent: Dave DeSantis, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
Located in the heart of Bethesda at the corner of Hampden Lane and Montgomery Lane, the Lauren is a new luxury residential condominium designed by Miami architect Robert M. Swedroe, with interiors by the Akseizer Group. The homes offer large floor plans, direct-access elevators, high ceilings, private rooftop terraces or private balconies, a home automation system, fireplaces and high-end fixtures and appliances. Building amenities will include a wine cellar for the use of residents that will double as a private screening room. This unit, anticipated to be ready in late 2015, has approximately 3,500 square feet, four bedrooms and five baths.
(Courtesy of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty)
• 1322 Vermont Ave. NW, Washington
$4.445 million
Agent: Peter Lane and Robert Sanders, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
This Logan Circle mansion, built in 1885, features more than 9,200 square feet on five levels with 11 bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and nine fireplaces. The interior features a careful restoration of the original exposed brick walls, wood beams, moldings and antique fireplaces. The home includes a finished lower level with two bedrooms, two baths and a kitchen as well as an in-law suite on the fourth floor with another kitchen, an oversized brick patio and parking for two cars.
(Courtesy of HomeVisit)
• 4929 Glenbrook Rd. NW, Washington
$4.295 million
Agent: William F.X. Moody and Robert Hryniewicki, Washington Fine Properties
Built in 1934, this completely restored brick Colonial in Spring Valley includes a two-story addition. The home has grand rooms for entertaining and family living, six bedrooms, nine baths and approximately 6,000 finished square feet. The home includes informal recreation areas on the lower level, a three-car garage and a terrace accessible from the living room and family room that leads to the rear garden.
(Courtesy of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty)
• 11206 Richland Grove Drive, Great Falls
$3.999 million
Agent: Penny Yerks and Anj Murphy, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
Known as Eight Oaks and inspired by the design of Shirley Plantation, this estate rests on one of the highest points of Great Falls. The five-acre property has a gated entry opening onto a winding drive, a four-car garage, a swimming pool and terraces. Inside, the home has four levels, each accessible by an elevator. The grand foyer has a floating marble staircase, the library has walls of black walnut harvested from the property, and the main level has multiple salons and promenades designed for entertaining on a lavish scale. The home has six bedrooms, 10 full baths, four half baths and a finished lower level with an in-law suite, a wine cellar, a gym and a club room.
Michele Lerner is a freelance writer.


Inside the D.C. area’s most expensive homes for sale

Using data from the Rockville-based multiple-listing service Bright MLS, we compiled a list of some of the most expensive houses for sale in the Washington area. Listings range from $3.499 million to $10.75 million and include two contemporary-style residences, a Montgomery County farm and a four-lot parcel in Vienna.
• 2815 Woodland Dr. NW, Washington
$10.75 million
Agent: Marilyn Charity, Washington Fine Properties
Built in 2010, this contemporary home in Massachusetts Avenue Heights was designed by Marshall Moya and sits on a nearly half-acre lot overlooking Rock Creek Park. The house has four bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The great room, which has 20-foot-high ceilings, offers views of the park. The house has slate floors, an elevator, five fireplaces, a whole-house media system, a media room, a wine room, an exercise room, a sauna, a swimming pool, five terraces and an eight-car garage. The house was listed at $13.5 million and $11.5 million last year.
• 5215 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda
$5.75 million
Agent: Marc Fleisher, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
This home, built in 1913, was renovated and expanded in 2013 by architect George Meyers of GTM Architects, Gibson Builders and interior designer Mary Douglas Drysdale. The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom residence has more than 11,000 square feet and sits on a nearly one-acre lot. The home has a ballroom-size living room with high ceilings and an Italian fireplace mantel. The master suite includes two bathrooms. Buyers also have a right of first refusal for the adjacent 26,700-square-foot lot. The home was listed last year at $9.995 million.
• 2404 Wyoming Ave. NW, Washington
$5.7 million
Agent: Michael Rankin, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty
The Colonial Revival-style mansion in Kalorama has been renovated by Jim Gibson and includes 8,241 square feet with seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms on four levels. The house, built in 1921,  has high ceilings and classic architectural details, an open kitchen and family room with an exposed-beam ceiling, a home theater, four fireplaces, an elevator and a wine cellar. Two sets of French doors open onto a terrace that overlooks gardens and a heated swimming pool. Three sets of French doors open from the lower level onto a shaded brick patio. This house was listed at $5.95 million last year.
• 1805 Hoban Rd. NW, Washington
$4.995 million
Agent: Ted Gossett, Washington Fine Properties
Built in 1932, this brick home was renovated and expanded in 2016. The 7,800-square-foot home has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and three fireplaces on four levels. The main level has a formal living room, a large dining room and a family room with a coffered ceiling and a wall with several sets of French doors. The kitchen includes two dishwashers, a professional-grade stove and a wine chiller, and there is a second kitchen on the lower level. The master suite has two bathrooms and two walk-in closets. The property has two terraces and a garden.
• 3611 R St. NW, Washington
$3.695 million
Agents: HRL Partners: Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Chris Leary with Washington Fine Properties
This contemporary home in the Burleith neighborhood adjacent to Georgetown, built in 2004, has 6,100 square feet on four levels. Each level has its own terrace, and a 1,250-square-foot roof deck provides more outdoor living space. The modern rooms include floor-to-ceiling walls of glass, a two-story living room with a fireplace, high ceilings and a master bathroom with a steam shower, a whirlpool tub and heated floors. The lower level of the house is an apartment with a second kitchen, four guest bedrooms and two bathrooms. Last year, the house was priced at $4.25 million.
• 10231 Leesburg Pike, Vienna
$3.5 million
Agent: Eric Stewart, Long & Foster Real Estate
Unlike many of the other expensive listings this month, this Vienna property is primarily valuable for its land, which includes four lots ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 acres. The land, purchased by Samuel Millard in 1915, includes a house, a garage and a guesthouse. Millard’s parents owned the nearby Colvin Run Mill, and he ran it until he sold it in 1934. The Millards also had a 40-acre family farm named Windswept. The four lots, which are being marketed to builders, are the last of the Millard family’s land.
• 17300 Whites Store Rd., Boyds, Md.
$3.5 million
Agent: Robert Jamison of Charles Jamison LLC
Built in 1983, the mansion at this Montgomery County estate rests on a hilltop on a 155-acre site. The main house has 20,585 square feet with nine bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. In addition to formal and informal entertaining spaces, which include a family room with built-in seating in a conversation pit, the house has an indoor swimming pool and whirlpool tub. The property also has two additional houses, cropland and a forest.
•
$3.499 million
Agent: Kesh Tayal, Wydler Brothers
Built in 2014, this French Manor-style house has 10,000 square feet with seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and four fireplaces. The house has an elevator, hardwood flooring, an expansive kitchen with two center islands, and a master suite with a separate sitting room with a fireplace and a coffee bar. The lower level includes a bar, a wine cellar, an exercise room and a media room. The grounds include a five-car garage and a guesthouse with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a deck and a covered patio.


Home of Savopoulos slayings in upper Northwest Washington for sale

The home where the high-profile killings took place is seen boarded up on June 16, 2015. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) The home in upper Northwest Washington where three members of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper were brutally killed in May is for sale. A real estate listing says the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house has 10,800 square feet and sits in the 3200 block of Woodland Drive NW. The sale price is $3.25 million. Businessman Savvas Savopoulos, 46, his wife Amy, 47, their son, Phillip, 10, and a housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa, 57, were found dead in May inside the home. It had been set on fire. [Sword, duct tape among possible evidence collected in Savopoulos killings] Authorities have charged Daron Wint, 34, with first-degree murder in connection with the deaths. Police have said the victims were held captive overnight and that the attacker or attackers fled with $40,000 delivered to the home as a ransom payment. The home in Northwest Washington where three members of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper where murdered in May is up for sale. The home's purchase price is listed for $3.25 million. Wint is scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court in December. At one of his recent hearings in September, prosecutors told a judge they were looking into whether Wint had an accomplice in the slayings. Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.

The home where the high-profile killings took place is seen boarded up on June 16, 2015. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) A real estate listing says the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house has 10,800 square feet and sits in the 3200 block of Woodland Drive NW. The sale price is $3.25 million. [Sword, duct tape among possible evidence collected in Savopoulos killings] Authorities have charged Daron Wint, 34, with first-degree murder in connection with the deaths. Police have said the victims were held captive overnight and that the attacker or attackers fled with $40,000 delivered to the home as a ransom payment. The home in Northwest Washington where three members of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper where murdered in May is up for sale. The home's purchase price is listed for $3.25 million. Wint is scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court in December. At one of his recent hearings in September, prosecutors told a judge they were looking into whether Wint had an accomplice in the slayings. Keith L. Alexander contributed to this report.


How do the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes compare?

The Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990 and is providing the world with dazzling images of the universe as well as creating breakthroughs in astrophysics.  It is nearing the end of its usable life and is set to be replaced by the James Webb space telescope, which is bigger and will be located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images of the faintest galaxies.  It will also be able to observe the universe in infrared wavelengths of light, which the Hubble can't. Exclude any documents not mentioning images.

Find information online to answer this space-related question.

A great view of colliding galaxies, thanks to magnifying glasses in the sky

This diagram shows how the effect of gravitational lensing around a normal galaxy focuses the light coming from a very distant star-forming galaxy merger to created a distorted, but brighter view. (ESA/ESO/M. Kornmesser) Remember "lensing galaxies"? With the help of several telescopes (including the Hubble) and an international team of astronomers, one of these gravitational lenses has revealed our best ever view of an ancient galactic collision. The two galaxies are pictured as they were when the universe was just half its current age, the astronomers report. The collision, using combined images from Hubble and Keck-II (NASA/ESA/ESO/W. M. Keck Observatory) Interacting galaxies The galaxies (known together as H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836) resemble a collision called the Antennae Galaxies. The latter collision is much closer to our planet, and has been imaged quite clearly using the Hubble before. But H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836 turns more than 400 times the mass of the Sun in gas into new stars each year, which is around ten times the rate of the Antennae system. It was a multi-telescoping effort that revealed clear images of the combined system. But the Hubble can track down the traces of these perfectly aligned cosmic lenses, allowing astronomers to devote their efforts to the right nooks and crannies of the universe.

This diagram shows how the effect of gravitational lensing around a normal galaxy focuses the light coming from a very distant star-forming galaxy merger to created a distorted, but brighter view. (ESA/ESO/M. Kornmesser) Remember "lensing galaxies"? The collision, using combined images from Hubble and Keck-II (NASA/ESA/ESO/W. M. Keck Observatory) Interacting galaxies It was a multi-telescoping effort that revealed clear images of the combined system. But the Hubble can track down the traces of these perfectly aligned cosmic lenses, allowing astronomers to devote their efforts to the right nooks and crannies of the universe.


Astronomers just saw farther back in time than they ever have before

The astronomers on the Hubble team broke the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy yet, galaxy GN-z11. Its image is shown as it existed 13.4 billion years ago.
To look through the lens of a telescope is to peer back in time.
The light we view through it has spent hundreds, millions, even billions of years crossing the vastness of space to reach us, carrying with it images of things that happened long ago.
On Thursday, astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope announced that they’d seen back farther than they ever have before, to a galaxy 13.4 billion light years away in a time when the universe was just past its infancy.
The finding shattered what’s known as the “cosmic distance record,” illuminating a point in time that scientists once thought could never be seen with current technology.
“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble,” Yale University astrophysicist Pascal Oesch, the lead author of the study, said in a statement.
The galaxy, unpoetically named GN-z11, appears as an unremarkable, fuzzy, dark red splotch when it’s magnified from an image taken by the Hubble Telescope. But by measuring a phenomenon known as redshift, Oesch and his colleagues were able to look back in time to when the galaxy was brilliantly blue and incredibly hot, bursting with brand new stars that formed at a frenetic rate.
“It really is star bursting,” study co-author Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, told the Associated Press.
Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, 13.4 billion light years away from Earth. (NASA/ESA handout via Reuters)
Redshift explains GN-z11’s dull crimson coloring: Because the universe is expanding, every object we see through a telescope is actually moving away from us. And as they move, the waves of light they emit stretch out, shifting in color from blue, which has a relatively short wavelength, down to red, whose waves are long. The phenomenon isn’t so different from the way the sound of a train deepens as it chugs away from the listener.
By measuring the degree of redshift, scientists can figure out how long light has been traveling to us through space, and thereby how long ago the thing that they’re looking at existed. Previously, the highest redshift number assigned to a galaxy was 8.68 — meaning it existed some 13.2 billion years in the past.
GN-z11’s redshift number is 11.1.
This means that the galaxy was around just 400 million years after the Big Bang — no time at all, in cosmic terms — to a period that is 97 percent of the way to the universe’s very beginnings.
(A note on time and distance: Light years are a measure of distance — how far light can travel in a year. But in cases like this, they are an indicator of age. Since the light from GN-z11 has traveled 13.4 billion years to reach us, that means it’s been traveling for 13.4 billion years, so its source must be 13.4 billion years old.)
(NASA, ESA, and A. Feild)
The universe was still a toddler at that stage — hazy, cold and shrouded in a fog of hydrogen gas.
But the stars in GN-z11 and other galaxies like it were fast-growing giants that would have swiftly heated things up, “frying” the gas around them, the scientists told the BBC. And new ones were popping out all the time; GN-z11 formed stars at a rate 20 times faster than our own Milky Way.
For a brief time, they burned brilliantly. And then they burned out.
The researchers say that the existence of such a hot and active galaxy shows how little they know about the universe’s toddler years. Marijn Franx, a co-author from the University of Leiden, noted in the statement that previous research suggested that such a thing wasn’t possible.
How exactly the brilliant GN-z11 was created “remains somewhat of a mystery for now,” added his colleague Ivo Labbe.
There is some skepticism about GN-z11’s age from other scientists. Speaking to the AP, Richard Ellis, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory who found the previous record-holder for farthest galaxy ever seen, noted that the astronomers studied a spectrum of light that’s seen as less reliable.
Ellis wrote in an email that those light signatures are “noisier and harder to interpret,” and that for GN-z11 to be visible it would have to be three times brighter than typical galaxies.
Oesch responded that his team made sure “this was as clean as possible a measurement,” and noted that the technique he used is now becoming standard.
This will probably stand as one of Hubble’s last big accomplishments and almost certainly its most distant find. The decades-old behemoth hasn’t been repaired since 2009, and will likely be retired after NASA launches its new space telescope, the James Webb, in 2018.
Exactly how that happens is still up in the air, so to speak. The telescope could be booted into a higher “parking orbit,” where it will float for centuries as yet another piece of space junk. Or it might be summoned back to Earth via a robotic craft, which would guide it on a fiery descent into the Pacific Ocean.
But both options are still years away. If anything, Oesch said, the new find shows that after more than two decades aloft, Hubble has still got it.
“Hubble has proven once again, even after almost 26 years in space, just how special it is,” he told the BBC. “When the telescope was launched, we were investigating galaxies a little over half-way back in cosmic history. Now, we’re going 97 percent of the way back. It really is a tremendous achievement.”
A look at the best photos of space.


Hubble telescope probes cosmic dawn, sees big stars, faint galaxies

Two venerable space telescopes, the Hubble and the Spitzer, have teamed to study the very early universe, and here’s what they see at the cosmic dawn: a wild and woolly party, with brilliant blue stars that aren’t ready to settle down into anything so structured as a conventional spiral galaxy.
Instead, the early years of the universe featured a profusion of small, irregular, blobby galaxies that were popping with big, hot, super-luminous stars forming at a furious rate. Galaxies were colliding all over the place.
Ray Villard, a spokesman for the Space Telescope Science Institute, which conducts Hubble research for NASA, said it’s like seeing the finale of a fireworks show, just that it’s close to the beginning of time.
The new results and images of the early cosmos were released Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society at National Harbor.
This is not the first time that the Hubble, in its third decade of operation, has taken a “deep field” look at the universe, training its gaze on a tiny spot and holding it there to collect the ancient light. But a new observation campaign, dubbed the Frontier Fields, supplements Hubble time with data from the Spitzer, which observes in infrared, and another space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
This long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 is the deepest ever made of any cluster of galaxies. It shows some of the faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected in space. Abell 2744, located in the constellation Sculptor, appears in the foreground of this image. It contains several hundred galaxies as they looked 3.5 billion years ago. (NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and the HFF Team (STScI))
The new campaign exploits a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This is an opportunistic maneuver that draws inspiration from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity curves the fabric of space and time.
In the foreground of one new image is a galaxy cluster named Abell 2744, containing hundreds of galaxies. “Foreground” is perhaps an imperfect term given that these galaxies are 3.5 billion light-years away — it has taken 3.5 billion years for the light to reach the Hubble. The gravity of the clustered galaxies creates a lensing effect that magnifies thousands of galaxies that are far in the background — some of them more than 12 billion light-years away, having emitted that light in the very earliest era of galaxy formation.
“Light following a path around those clusters is bent,” Jennifer Lotz, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The initial expansion of the universe, known as the Big Bang, happened about 13.7 billion years ago, a measurement that has become more precise in the past few years with new data from space telescopes. Theorists believe it took about 400 million years for the first stars to ignite and the first galaxies to form. The Hubble can’t see quite that deeply in time and space, but the earliest galaxy-forming epoch is a target for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.
The universe in its youth was going through a blue period, because the stars were blue, just like the young, hot stars we see in the constellation Orion, said Garth Illingworth, professor of astronomy at the University of California at Santa Cruz and one of the scientists involved in the new research.
In telescopes, these young galaxies look red, because their light has been stretched out — red-shifted — over billions of years. “In reality, if you go there, it’s all blue,” Illingworth said.
If you could have parked yourself in that young universe, you would have seen those blue galaxies all around, many as big as our moon, Illingworth said. But you couldn’t go for a star-gazing stroll, because there were no planets then. The matter in the cosmos was mostly hydrogen, with a smidgen of helium and hardly any atoms larger than that.
“It was much, much wilder than what we see today,” said Anahita Alavi, a graduate student in the physics and astronomy department at the University of California at Riverside. “Everything was closer together. The possibility of these galaxies colliding with each other, and merging with each other, was higher.”
Star formation picked up speed for several billion years. But then, about 9 billion years ago, the situation calmed down markedly and became more organized. Stars formed at a slower rate. The expanding universe became home to billions of majestic spiral and elliptical galaxies — and, on one rock at least, to astronomers staring into the night sky.
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Behold, the Hubble Telescope’s latest close-up photo of Jupiter

Jupiter, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday. (Courtesy of NASA, the European Space Agency, A. Simon via GSFC)
Amid plenty of political turmoil on Earth on Thursday, NASA and the European Space Agency quietly released the latest photo of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
This picture revealed no new discoveries, unlike a Hubble image last fall that detected evidence of water vapor plumes from one of Jupiter's moons. Nor did it capture the aftermath of some significant event, such as when a comet or asteroid collided with Jupiter's atmosphere and left it “bruised.”
Instead, Thursday's picture was simply a reminder that, somewhere out there above the heavens, a decades-old space telescope is still doing what it has done best: capturing spectacularly detailed images of the universe to blow the minds of those on Earth.
This month, Jupiter is in opposition, meaning it is at its closest to our planet (416 million miles away), with its Earth-facing hemisphere fully illuminated by the sun. It will shine especially brightly Friday night and early Saturday morning, when it makes its absolute closest approach.
Never ones to miss an opportunity, NASA and the ESA decided to point the Hubble toward Jupiter while it was in opposition, so that it could capture the atmosphere of the largest planet in the solar system in more detail.
The image it took Monday didn't disappoint. Hubble was able to capture surface features that are just 80 miles across.
“The final image shows a sharp view of Jupiter and reveals a wealth of features in its dense atmosphere,” NASA and the ESA, which cooperate on the Hubble project, said in a statement. The picture “reveals the intricate, detailed beauty of Jupiter’s clouds as arranged into bands of different latitudes.”
Clearly visible in the photo are Jupiter's famous atmospheric bands, created by different-colored clouds. The lighter bands have higher concentrations of frozen ammonia in them, compared with the darker ones, the agencies said.
On the lower left side of the image is Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, an ongoing larger-than-Earth storm on the gas giant planet's surface. A smaller storm, dubbed “Red Spot Junior,” is visible farther south. Winds on the planet can reach up to 400 mph.
“However, as with the last images of Jupiter taken by Hubble and telescopes on the ground, this new image confirms that the huge storm that has raged on Jupiter’s surface for at least 150 years continues to shrink,” the agencies said. “The reason for this is still unknown. So Hubble will continue to observe Jupiter in the hope that scientists will solve this stormy riddle.”
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit in 1990, and ever since its first photo — an underwhelming grainy, black-and-white image of some stars, thanks to a flaw in a primary mirror — it has gone on to deliver some truly dazzling images from space. Time magazine has a roundup of the 50 “best” photos taken by Hubble, though all are quite extraordinary in their own way, depending on one's interest in any particular corner of the universe.
Photos of Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft; Perseid meteor shower; Kepler space telescope’s detection of possible new exoplanets; and more images from space.
NASA has been developing a new telescope, the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, that will be able to see back in time, almost to the beginning of the universe. The Webb will be able to collect seven times the starlight as the Hubble and observe the universe in infrared wavelengths of light, which the Hubble can't, The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach reported in February. Eventually, the Webb telescope is expected to replace the Hubble, which “is still working fabulously but getting long in the tooth,” Achenbach wrote.
Until then, the Hubble will continue capturing away. The photo released Thursday was part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program, according to NASA and the ESA. The program, which allows the telescope to study the outer planets each year, started in 2014 with Uranus and has been observing Jupiter and Neptune since 2015. In 2018, the Hubble will turn its focus to Saturn.
Read more:
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You can now spell ‘Earthling’ with a capital ‘E,’ and here’s why
See the best images of Jupiter yet, just in time for NASA’s Juno probe


Newly identified galaxy is the most distant ever confirmed

An artist's rendition of the newly discovered galaxy z8_GND_5296. The galaxy looks red in the actual Hubble Space Telescope image because the collective blue light gets shifted due to the expansion of the universe and its large distance from Earth. (V. Tilvi/S.L. Finkelstein/ C. Papovich/Hubble Heritage Team)
Scientists have discovered the most distant galaxy ever confirmed, whose light took just over 13 billion years to reach Earth, providing a snapshot of the early universe. The faraway system resides in the night sky just above the handle of the Big Dipper.
One curious trait about the record-breaker is that it forms stars at an incredible rate, about 330 per year — more than a hundred times faster than our Milky Way galaxy. This could be a trademark of the universe’s early days, when hydrogen gas for star formation was much more plentiful.
“We wanted to figure out how galaxies evolve,” said Steven Finkelstein, lead author and University of Texas at Austin astronomer. “One way to do that is to push back deeper and deeper into the history of the universe.” The study was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
At first, the landmark discovery was a little bit of a let-down, the scientists said.
The team of astronomers used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to identify 43 possible faraway galaxies and then used state-of-the-art spectrographic equipment at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their distances. In the end, Finkelstein and his colleagues could only retrieve data from this lone galaxy.
Over the past 12 months, scientists have captured stunning images of the planets, a galaxy, a planetary nebula and more from space.
“We were first excited, then a little disappointed because we only saw one, and then excited again,” he said. “We would have hoped for some number bigger than one.”
With advances in instrumentation technology, astronomers continue to stretch their detection capabilities further outward from the Milky Way. Because light takes time to travel such long distances, remote objects allow them to peer back through time.
Take the sun as a simple example, said study author and Texas A&M University astronomer Vithal Tilvi. Sunlight takes a little over eight minutes to reach Earth.
“That means that when we are looking at the sun, we are actually looking at the sun as it was eight minutes ago,” he said.
In comparison, the light detected from this outlying galaxy — with the official catalogue name z8_GND_5296 — left the galaxy 13.1 billion years ago. This gives us a glimpse of the universe as it was when it was only 700 million years old.
In other words, we’re looking 95 percent of the way back to the Big Bang. To put that into human terms, that would be like an 80-year-old watching a video of himself on his fourth birthday.
“From observing these distant galaxies, we can understand how the universe was when it was very young,” Tilvi said. “There’s no other way to look into the past.”
Here’s a look back at some of the space telescope’s discoveries.
Setting out to find the most distant galaxy isn’t a single eureka moment, but rather a careful process of confirmation and remeasurement. Further-away galaxies than z8_GND_5296 have been identified but failed a double-check process along the way.
The team first perused a month’s worth of images from the Hubble telescope for possible candidate galaxies. Hubble avoids the snags that Earth-bound telescopes can run into, such as clouds and bad weather, to more easily spot the red blobs that signal a distant object.
The same effect that causes a passing ambulance siren to change pitch as it zooms by, called the Doppler shift, makes the most distant galaxies appear red. Because the universe is expanding, the galaxy’s light moves away from us and gets stretched into a redder wavelength.
“These galaxies from within the first billion years of the universe are so far away that they have shifted into the infrared, or redder than our eyes can see,” Finkelstein said.
How red the light of the object is gives some sense of how far away it is, but a technique called spectroscopy is the true litmus test that accurately confirms the distance. The researchers spent two days at the Keck Observatory, near the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano, looking for a characteristic piece of data called the Lyman-alpha emission line.
The Lyman-alpha line tends to be a bright signature of old-universe galaxies that are forming stars at a high rate. Once found for a particular galaxy, an exact distance from Earth can be calculated.
Although disappointing at first, finding only one Lyman-alpha line is an intriguing discovery, the scientists say.
One theory says that, after cooling down from the Big Bang, a cosmic fog of neutral hydrogen gas cloaked our early universe.
“That was the case until the very first galaxies lit up,” said Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who was not involved in the study. “They produced the ultraviolet radiation that broke up hydrogen.”
Gradually, the universe started a “reionization” process — first with bubbles of ionization around individual stars, then dwarf galaxies. As those young galaxies grew in size and overlapped, they formed larger regions of ionization that eventually became today’s fully ionized universe.
“Perhaps we are seeing the evidence that it ended right around this galaxy,” Loeb said, and this one happened to peek through the fog where the other 42 candidates could not.
Loeb also believes the unusually high star-formation rate may have to be reconfirmed. Although there are other galaxies that birth hundreds of stars per year, they are often quite massive, while z8_GND_5296 is considered a dwarf galaxy.
“It’s not unusual to find small galaxies at those early times, but finding such a small galaxy making so many stars at once is unusual,” he said.
Kim is a freelance science writer based in Philadelphia.
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Destination Unknown part 2: The skies. The limits.


After 21 years on the case, astronomers track down a thieving star

This is an artist’s impression of supernova 1993J, which exploded in the galaxy M81. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have identified the blue helium-burning companion star, seen at the center of the expanding nebula of debris from the supernova. (NASA/Maria-Jose Viñas) Over two decades ago, scientists discovered a supernova, or exploding star, named SN 1993J. Located 11 million light-years away in the Messier 81 galaxy, the supernova was of an unusual type -- it had less hydrogen than your usual stellar explosion. Because of this, astronomers always thought it must have a companion star. The companion star would have stolen hydrogen from the first before it went supernova, leaving behind a mostly-hydrogen shell. In a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers report that they've finally fingered the culprit. “A binary system is likely required to lose the majority of the primary star’s hydrogen envelope prior to the explosion," said lead researcher Ori Fox of UC Berkeley in a statement. "The problem is that, to date, direct observations of the predicted binary companion star have been difficult to obtain since it is so faint relative to the supernova itself." To identify the companion star, Fox and his colleagues used images from the Hubble telescope. They looked for a spectrum of ultraviolet light that matched the predicted glow of the companion star, so it could be distinguished from the other stars in its crowded neighborhood. NASA reports

This is an artist’s impression of supernova 1993J, which exploded in the galaxy M81. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have identified the blue helium-burning companion star, seen at the center of the expanding nebula of debris from the supernova. (NASA/Maria-Jose Viñas) Over two decades ago, scientists discovered a supernova, or exploding star, named SN 1993J. Located 11 million light-years away in the Messier 81 galaxy, the supernova was of an unusual type -- it had less hydrogen than your usual stellar explosion. Because of this, astronomers always thought it must have a companion star. The companion star would have stolen hydrogen from the first before it went supernova, leaving behind a mostly-hydrogen shell. In a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers report that they've finally fingered the culprit. To identify the companion star, Fox and his colleagues used images from the Hubble telescope. They looked for a spectrum of ultraviolet light that matched the predicted glow of the companion star, so it could be distinguished from the other stars in its crowded neighborhood. NASA reports


Here’s what you should know about the newfound TRAPPIST-1 solar system

relatively quiet star, and the level of radiation the planets probably receive doesn't look totally hostile to life. But it's still something to worry about. The planets don't have days and nights. For the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, this means that one side of each body is constantly blasted with their sun's heat, while the other sides are perpetually in darkness. This … doesn't sound very homey. It could create huge temperature gradients that drive powerful winds. It could mean that half of each planet freezes while the other half burns. No, it won't. Sorry, Annie. (tumblr) We can't see the planets directly. Scientists were able to detect the planets using the “transiting method,” in which they use tiny dips in light from the star caused by the planets passing across its face. With the Hubble Space Telescope, the soon-to-launch James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, astronomers can also analyze the light that passes through the atmospheres of the planets to figure out what molecules those atmospheres contain. But we won't be able to directly image the solar system with current technology, Gillon said. Because the planets are so close to their star, they will be impossible to distinguish amid its glare. Just because some of the planets are in the habitable zone doesn't mean that they're actually habitable, let alone inhabited. Mars makes this landscape look lush. (tumblr) Amy Barr Mlinar, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, pointed out that, in some ways, life is a requirement for life. Even with all these caveats, the planets are really, really exciting. “There are other worlds out there just like the Earth that have some commonalities with the Earth and we can imagine them,” NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen said at a news conference Wednesday. “The question, 'Are we alone out here?' is being answered as we speak.” There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and it's thought that about 15 percent of them are ultracool dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1. If even a fraction of those stars host multiple planet systems, and even a fraction of those have terrestrial planets in the habitable zone, there could potentially be millions of rocky worlds waiting for us to explore. “The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter of if, but when,” Zurbuchen said. But we don't need to wait to find other Earthlike

Astronomers found a new solar system just 39 light years from ours, full of Earthlike planets. Here’s what you should know about the TRAPPIST-1 system.
You may have heard that astronomers made a big announcement today about a “discovery outside our solar system.”
It wasn't aliens.
Instead, astronomers reported the discovery of a solar system containing seven rocky, Earth-size planets just 39 light years away. The bodies orbit an ultracool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1 in the constellation Aquarius. Several of the planets are located in what's known as the “habitable zone” — the Goldilocks region where it's thought water can exist and life can thrive.
This is the first time astronomers have discovered so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star, and this new system could be the best target in the galaxy to search for extraterrestrial life. Even they aren't home to aliens, TRAPPIST-1 will provide planetary scientists with an unprecedented new window on the formation of solar systems and the behavior of rocky worlds.
So, sure, this is a really cool discovery. Even if I hadn't watched “Contact” over the weekend, I'd be daydreaming about visiting TRAPPIST-1, where transits are a daily spectacle and the star's dim glow gives the appearance of a perpetual sunset. Just add an ocean and a few palm trees, and it's hard to imagine a better vacation spot.
(tumblr)
But I'm not packing my bags just yet, and you probably shouldn't either. Here's why:
TRAPPIST-1 is 39 light years away.
Yes, that is crazy close in the scheme of the universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across. But even if humanity had a spacecraft capable of moving at the speed of light, it would take almost four decades to get to TRAPPIST-1. I don't know about you, but I don't have that many vacation days.
It's kind of a wimpy star.
TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star, 10 times smaller and 2.5 times cooler than our own sun. In fact, it's more comparable to Jupiter than to the sun. Even though the TRAPPIST-1 planets are Earthlike, the system is definitely an alien one. It's not clear what the likelihood of life might be in such a system.
Not that kind of dwarf. (tumblr)
How close is too close?
The planets of this system orbit in super tight circles around their sun. The entire system is barely bigger than the distance between the sun and Mercury. This is what lets them stay warm by their star's dim light, but it also puts them at risk. Solar flares could damage their atmospheres (if they have atmospheres), radiation could blast away any nascent life (if life even emerged). Michael Gillon, the lead author of the study, said that TRAPPIST-1 is a relatively quiet star, and the level of radiation the planets probably receive doesn't look totally hostile to life. But it's still something to worry about.

The planets don't have days and nights.
Because the planets are close to the sun, and to one another, the astronomers believe that they are “tidally locked.” This is what happens when the amount of time it takes a body to orbit matches the length of one rotation on its axis. The result is that the same side of the body always faces the object it orbits around. The moon is tidally locked with Earth, which is why we always see the same face of our satellite when we look up at night.
For the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, this means that one side of each body is constantly blasted with their sun's heat, while the other sides are perpetually in darkness. This … doesn't sound very homey. It could create huge temperature gradients that drive powerful winds. It could mean that half of each planet freezes while the other half burns.
No, it won't. Sorry, Annie. (tumblr)
We can't see the planets directly.
Scientists were able to detect the planets using the “transiting method,” in which they use tiny dips in light from the star caused by the planets passing across its face. With the Hubble Space Telescope, the soon-to-launch James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, astronomers can also analyze the light that passes through the atmospheres of the planets to figure out what molecules those atmospheres contain.
But we won't be able to directly image the solar system with current technology, Gillon said. Because the planets are so close to their star, they will be impossible to distinguish amid its glare.
Just because some of the planets are in the habitable zone doesn't mean that they're actually habitable, let alone inhabited.
The “habitable zone” is kind of a squishy concept. Astronomers define it as the range of orbits around a given star at which planets are warm enough to sustain liquid water on their surface. But it's all theoretical. Scientists assume that a middling distance from the sun and liquid water make a planet habitable because they're so essential to life on Earth. But there are ways for bodies to hold water even if they're far away from their stars. Just look at Europa, the moon of Jupiter that is thought to have a vast, salty ocean beneath its icy surface. Plus, lots of liquid water isn't necessarily a good thing. In a paper published in the journal Science in 2013, astrophysicist Sara Seager pointed out that water is a greenhouse gas — too much of it too close to a star could trap heat on a planet and turn it into something like Venus.
Besides, a planet requires a lot more than water and light to be livable. Scientists think Mars once had water, but when its internal dynamo broke down, it lost its atmosphere and became the frozen desert we know today. Truly habitable planets probably need strong magnetic fields to protect their inhabitants from radiation and fierce solar winds.
Mars makes this landscape look lush. (tumblr)
Amy Barr Mlinar, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, pointed out that, in some ways, life is a requirement for life.
Even with all these caveats, the planets are really, really exciting.
“There are other worlds out there just like the Earth that have some commonalities with the Earth and we can imagine them,” NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen said at a news conference Wednesday. “The question, 'Are we alone out here?' is being answered as we speak.”
There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and it's thought that about 15 percent of them are ultracool dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1. If even a fraction of those stars host multiple planet systems, and even a fraction of those have terrestrial planets in the habitable zone, there could potentially be millions of rocky worlds waiting for us to explore.
“The discovery gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter of if, but when,” Zurbuchen said.
But we don't need to wait to find other Earthlike exoplanets. The TRAPPIST-1 system has offered up seven such worlds, and they're right within our sights. All scientists have to do now is point their telescopes at it and look.


Webb Space Telescope promises astronomers new scientific adventures

become fainter and farther away, you need a big telescope like the James Webb.” A view inside the Helium-cooled shroud that takes the telescope’s Integrated Science Instrument Module, ISIM, to its flight operating temperature of 35 kelvins and above. (Chris Gunn/NASA) The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies. Four infrared cameras will capture light that is moving away from us very quickly and that has shifted from the visible to the infrared spectrum, described as red-shifted. The advantage of using infrared light is that it is not blocked by clouds of gas and dust that may lie between the telescope and the light. Webb’s mirrors are covered in a thin layer of gold that absorbs blue light but reflects yellow and red visible light, and its cameras will detect infrared light and a small part of the visible spectrum. As objects move away from us, the wavelength of their light shifts from visible light to infrared light. That’s why the Webb’s infrared cameras will be able to see things that are both far away and moving away from us. The cameras will also probe the atmospheres of planets that revolve around nearby stars, known as exoplanets, for the chemical signatures of life: water, oxygen and maybe even pollution from alien civilizations. But before any of that dazzling science happens, there’s a lot of testing to do at Goddard, in the clean room and a nearby “cryo-chamber.” An overhead view of engineers working with the ISIM inside the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (Chris Gunn/NASA) The five-layer sun shield for the James Webb Space Telescope is tested in July at the Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, Calif. (Chris Gunn/NASA/EPA) “It’s not feasible to test it as a complete system,” said Geithner, NASA’s deputy project manager for technical issues. “So what that means is we have to test different pieces of it and convince ourselves through testing and analysis that when it’s put together, it will work.” Five sunshield test layers were unfolded and separated in July 2014 for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope by Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif. Back in the 1990s, NASA sent shuttle astronauts to repair Hubble’s mirror during a dangerous operation that required five days of spacewalks. But that’s not

Dressed in a protective suit, NASA photographer Desiree Stover shines a light on a portion of the James Webb Space Telescope, being assembled at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.  (CHRIS GUNN/NASA)
Dressed in a protective suit, NASA photographer Desiree Stover shines a light on a portion of the James Webb Space Telescope, being assembled at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (Chris Gunn/NASA)
Inside a very big and very clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., nearly 30 workers dressed in white protective suits, goggles and blue booties cluster around the parts of a time machine.
These parts — gold-covered mirrors, tennis-court-size sun shields, delicate infrared cameras — are slowly being put together to become the James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers are hoping that the Webb will be able to collect light that is very far away from us and is moving still farther away. The universe has been expanding ever since the big bang got it started, but scientists reckon that if the telescope is powerful enough, they just might be able to see the birth of the first galaxies, some 13.5 billion years ago.
“This is similar to archaeology,” says Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who helped plan Webb’s science mission. “We are digging deep into the universe. But as the sources of light become fainter and farther away, you need a big telescope like the James Webb.”
A view inside the Helium-cooled shroud that takes the telescope’s Integrated Science Instrument Module, ISIM, to its flight operating temperature of 35 kelvins and above. (Chris Gunn/NASA)
Named for a former NASA director, the 21-foot-diameter Webb telescope will be 100 times as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990. Although Hubble wasn’t the first space telescope, its images of far-off objects have dazzled the public and led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining how fast the universe is expanding.
The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies. Four infrared cameras will capture light that is moving away from us very quickly and that has shifted from the visible to the infrared spectrum, described as red-shifted. The advantage of using infrared light is that it is not blocked by clouds of gas and dust that may lie between the telescope and the light. Webb’s mirrors are covered in a thin layer of gold that absorbs blue light but reflects yellow and red visible light, and its cameras will detect infrared light and a small part of the visible spectrum. As objects move away from us, the wavelength of their light shifts from visible light to infrared light. That’s why the Webb’s infrared cameras will be able to see things that are both far away and moving away from us.
The cameras will also probe the atmospheres of planets that revolve around nearby stars, known as exoplanets, for the chemical signatures of life: water, oxygen and maybe even pollution from alien civilizations.
But before any of that dazzling science happens, there’s a lot of testing to do at Goddard, in the clean room and a nearby “cryo-chamber.”
An overhead view of engineers working with the ISIM inside the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (Chris Gunn/NASA)
The five-layer sun shield for the James Webb Space Telescope is tested in July at the Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, Calif. (Chris Gunn/NASA/EPA)
Various tests will squeeze, shake, freeze and twist thousands of individual parts in an effort to make sure the spacecraft will survive blastoff from a spaceport in French Guyana and the cold environment of its orbiting position almost a million miles from Earth. By comparison, Hubble circles just 375 miles above our planet, depending on its orbit.
The project, which began in 2004, peaks in October 2018 when the telescope is launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency. From now on, NASA engineers will find the pace picking up and deadlines getting even tighter.
As a young engineer in the early 1990s, Paul Geithner helped fix tiny bumps on Hubble’s glass mirror, a flaw discovered after the telescope was in space. Today, at 52, Geithner is making sure everything stays on track on the Webb assembly line at Goddard. He says testing of individual parts, including each of the 18 hexagonal mirrors, the backplane (which NASA describes as the spine holding the mirrors) and all the scientific instruments will be done by the end of this year. Beginning in early 2015, portions of the telescope and its spacecraft will be joined together with special glue and bolts.
“It’s not feasible to test it as a complete system,” said Geithner, NASA’s deputy project manager for technical issues. “So what that means is we have to test different pieces of it and convince ourselves through testing and analysis that when it’s put together, it will work.”
Five sunshield test layers were unfolded and separated in July 2014 for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope by Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif.
Back in the 1990s, NASA sent shuttle astronauts to repair Hubble’s mirror during a dangerous operation that required five days of spacewalks. But that’s not an option for the Webb: It will be parked too far away.
Geithner said everybody learned lessons from the Hubble mistake, which NASA blamed on a contractor. Now, the need for independent testing of the optical surfaces is clear. “You don’t use the same tools that you use to make the optics to tell you it is okay,” he said.
This year concluded several “cryo-tests” (testing reactions at extremely low temperatures), in which the boxlike structure containing the infrared cameras — called the Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM — was lowered into a 60-foot-tall vacuum chamber at Goddard. The air was pumped out to simulate conditions in space, liquid nitrogen flooded an inner chamber and super-cooled helium was pumped into a smaller interior chamber. The four-camera package faced temperatures of 11 degrees Kelvin, which is minus-440 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The biggest stress is not the shaking from the [spacecraft] launch,” Geithner explained. “But the whole thing shrinks when it cools down, so there’s a lot of stress on the joints and it tries to tear itself apart.”
The Hubble Space Telescope captured the Jovian moon Ganymede in the center of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The Webb will be bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture better images. (AFP/NASA/Getty Images/ESA/A. Simon/Goddard Space Flight Cente)
A protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA, sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (AFP/Getty Images/ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
ISIM survived the cryo-test in July, was warmed up to room temperature and then removed from the cryo-chamber in October. It needs to be pulled apart, then put back together for final tests next year.
Measuring everything twice means the Webb telescope will function as it is supposed to, according to Geithner. But the extra testing is expensive.
Cost overruns and early delays nearly killed the project in 2011. Webb’s price tag soared from initial estimates of $1 billion in the late 1990s to the current figure of $8.8 billion. But Congress gave NASA a second chance, and the agency revised its construction budget to keep it within limits. Still, the Webb is NASA’s most expensive science mission. Some critics say it has sucked money away from other worthy projects, such as other missions around the solar system or monitoring environmental changes on Earth.
NASA chief Charles Bolden told Goddard workers in February that the project is on budget and on schedule, as long as Congress keeps the money flowing.
Discoveries in our solar system and beyond.
In the meantime, scientists such as Sara Seager of MIT, who studies exoplanets that revolve around distant stars, are imagining the discoveries that will occur once Webb directs its mirrors toward deep space. As a planet moves in front of a star, researchers hope to see the fingerprints of its atmosphere, which absorbs starlight. By analyzing the chemical spectrum of the light, they may be able to determine the atmosphere’s composition. Oxygen has a spectral fingerprint, as does methane, carbon dioxide and other gases found in atmospheres.
Seager and other scientists can point the Hubble at exoplanets, but they don’t get much time to use it because the entire telescope heats up and cools down as it passes from day to night.
Exoplanet hunters need to point the telescope for a long time at one place. The Webb telescope represents a big step forward, according to Seager, because it won’t be bothered by light or radiation from the sun and the Earth and therefore will be able to see more-distant objects. (A five-layer sun shield and distance from the Earth will protect the telescope.)
“Anytime you put something new in space, the astronomy world changes dramatically,” Seager said.
Support structures wrapped in gold thermal blankets are housed within the vacuum chamber called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES. The SES is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where components of the James Webb Space Telescope are being tested to withstand the extreme temperatures of space. (Chris Gunn/NASA)
When NASA began planning the Webb telescope, exoplanets were just being discovered. The early ones were huge, Jupiter-size bodies that were too cold or too poisonous to harbor the conditions needed for life. Now, scientists have found more than 5,000 exoplanets, from big gas giants to smaller rocky worlds that lie within what’s called the “Goldilocks zone” — neither too close nor too far away from their star, meaning conditions are neither too hot nor too cold.
“These [space telescopes] take so long to build,” Seager said. “Originally we didn’t know about the richness of exoplanets, and we didn’t know they were so diverse. I see the James Webb as the tool for the second generation of exoplanet studies.”
As they wait for the Webb’s launch in four years, Seager and other planetary scientists are drawing up a list of star systems that could be candidates for the first studies.
Seager says she likes to remind people about the value of big, complex scientific projects, even if they cost a lot of money, take a long time to build and don’t have a concrete scientific payoff.
“As a nation, should we be building complicated things and pushing the limit of progress in technology? It’s a question I like to pose to people,” she said. “Should we just get by, or is it critical for our future to invest in complicated technologies? That usually makes them think for a while.”
Niiler is a freelance writer.
A tale of two telescopes
Hubble
Webb

Weight
24,500 pounds
14,300 pounds

Mirror diameter
8 feet
21 feet

Distance from Earth
375 miles
930,000 miles

Launch date
April 1990
October 2018
Source: NASA
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Hubble finds huge, magnifying glass galaxy
Hubble telescope probes cosmic dawn, sees big stars


The Hubble found a galaxy so huge, it acts like a magnifying glass

The massive red galaxy reveals a small spiral galaxy (in blue) behind it. (NASA and ESA) "Lensing" galaxies Now, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have unexpectedly found the most distant lensing galaxy to date. Its light has taken 9.6 billion years to reach us (200 million light years closer than the previous record holder), and the obect it's magnifying - a tiny spiral galaxy that we can now see undergoing a surge of star formation - is 10.7 billion light years away. Kenneth Wong, one of the researchers to announce the discovery, said in a NASA press release that these cosmic magnifiers aren't all that rare. But to find outside of our stellar backyard is a special treat. "There are hundreds of lens galaxies that we know about, but almost all of them are relatively nearby, in cosmic terms," said Wong, first author on the team's science paper. "To find a lens as far away as this one is a very special discovery because we can learn about the dark-matter content of galaxies in the distant past. By comparing our analysis of this lens galaxy to the more nearby lenses, we can start to understand how that dark-matter content has evolved over time." Dark matter The lens galaxy has presumably spent the past 9 billion years bulking up on dark matter as it grew up, and today it probably looks a lot like the massive galaxies we find closer to home. But because it's so far away, the image we see of it provides a fascinating lens into the past.

The massive red galaxy reveals a small spiral galaxy (in blue) behind it. (NASA and ESA) "Lensing" galaxies "There are hundreds of lens galaxies that we know about, but almost all of them are relatively nearby, in cosmic terms," said Wong, first author on the team's science paper. "To find a lens as far away as this one is a very special discovery because we can learn about the dark-matter content of galaxies in the distant past. By comparing our analysis of this lens galaxy to the more nearby lenses, we can start to understand how that dark-matter content has evolved over time." Dark matter The lens galaxy has presumably spent the past 9 billion years bulking up on dark matter as it grew up, and today it probably looks a lot like the massive galaxies we find closer to home. But because it's so far away, the image we see of it provides a fascinating lens into the past.