Elbahrain.net The surprise offensive on Aleppo by Syrian rebel groups has left the US in the difficult position of not fully supporting either side while also maintaining a force posture of nearly 1,000 troops in Syria as part of the ongoing mission to fight ISIS.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, on Monday distanced the US from the offensive last week, in which rebel groups quickly advanced on and took Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, for the first time in years.

“Let me be clear that the US is in no way involved in the operations you see playing out in and around Aleppo in northwestern Syria, which as you know are being led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a designated terrorist organization,” he said in reference to a group known as HTS, adding that the US “is urging de-escalation.”

As you know, they are formerly known as ‘Nusrah Front,’ an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, but bottom line is: still a designated terrorist organization,” Ryder said Monday of HTS.

Meanwhile, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said later Monday that the US would not lift its sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which he said has shown “no change in behavior.” The US has applied more sanctions to the regime since 2011, when uprisings in the country began, to cut off needed resources as a result of the government’s violence against civilians and “to pressure the Syrian regime to allow for a democratic transition as the Syrian people demand,” according to the State Department.

Amid the renewed unrest in the country, roughly 900 US service members are deployed in Syria as part of the anti-ISIS mission. And while the operations in Aleppo are on the other side of the country from where US forces are operating, the instability — and primarily, Russia’s response in assisting the Assad government — has resulted in the US military communicating with Moscow to prevent “miscalculation.”

In response to the surprise advance on Aleppo, Russia — a main supporter of the Syrian regime — launched an aerial offensive against armed opposition forces in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Ryder said Monday that the US general in charge of the coalition mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria has now spoken with Russian officials on a preestablished hotline

Asked about reports of attacks over the last 24 hours, Ryder said there was a “rocket attack against one of our facilities in Syria,” though no US personnel were injured and no infrastructure damage was reported. And on Friday, he said, US forces conducted a “self-defense strike near MSS Euphrates,” taking out a potential threat to the US base. There were also no injuries or infrastructure damage reported in that incident.

Ryder said that was “completely unrelated to the ongoing situation in northwestern Syria.” He added that there have not yet been any US force posture changes in Syria

Elbahrain.net The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a surprising new view of a long-studied galactic neighbor, the Sombrero galaxy, revealing a perspective that looks quite different from the wide-brimmed Mexican hat for which it was named.

Taken with the space observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, the image showcases the galaxy’s smooth inner disk, rather than the glowing core that usually shines in visible light images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb’s view makes the “crown” of the sombrero invisible, changing the appearance of the galaxy to resemble a bull’s-eye. Meanwhile, distant galaxies glimmer in the background of the image.

The galaxy — also known as Messier 104, or M104 — is about 30 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo constellation. French astronomer and comet hunter Pierre Méchain discovered it in 1781. Méchain named the galactic find for his colleague Charles Messier, who famously cataloged star clusters and nebulae.

Webb’s sensitive instruments can detect celestial objects through varying wavelengths of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, to reveal previously unseen details of the universe.

The fine details of Messier 104 detected by MIRI also showcase the galaxy’s outer ring, revealing how dust — a crucial ingredient for celestial objects such as stars and planets — is structured and distributed throughout the galaxy.

Previously, when NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope observed the Sombrero galaxy, the outer ring appeared smooth, but Webb’s new imagery reveals the complex, clumpy nature of the dusty ring, which could suggest the presence of a stellar nursery.

Webb’s new detections also enabled astronomers to spot carbon-containing molecules, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in the dust ring, which further suggests that the galaxy’s outer ring may be home to star-forming regions. But the Sombrero galaxy is quiet in terms of star formation compared with other galaxies such as Messier 82. Ten times as many stars are born in the latter galaxy than the estimated 100 billion stars that exist in the Milky Way.

Scientists estimate that the rings of the Sombrero galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars each year, with one solar mass equaling the mass of our sun. In contrast, the Milky Way is responsible for creating about two solar masses a year, according to NASA.

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Sombrero galaxy is also less active than those at the center of other galaxies, slowly consuming material from Messier 104 and releasing a bright but small jet of radiation.

But the galaxy is full of 2,000 globular clusters, or groups of hundreds of thousands of old stars gravitationally held together, providing the perfect place for astronomers to conduct comparison studies of stars that are the same age but differ in mass and other aspects.

The Webb telescope, launched in December 2021, will begin its fourth year of observing the universe in July. Scientists across the globe have applied for observation time with the telescope to search for exoplanets and their atmospheres, stars and distant galaxies