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Stars are born spinning rapidly, but slow down over billions of years. (Our 4.5-billion-year-old Sun spins about once per month.) After about one billion years, stars of the same mass and age will spin at the same rate. Therefore, if you know a star’s mass and rotation rate, you potentially can estimate its age. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to measure the spin rates, and calculate the ages, of hundreds of thousands of stars after it launches by May 2027.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has set its sights on the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82), a small but mighty environment that features rapid star formation.

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The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) has named 24 new fellows to its 2024 roster. These young scientists will begin their programs in the fall of 2024 at a university or research center of their choosing in the United States.

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ULLYSES, the largest Hubble program ever, collected information about almost 500 young stars over a three-year period. It aims to help researchers gain new insights about the stars’ formation, evolution, and impact on their surroundings.

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A Hubble telescope survey has found that brown dwarfs—objects smaller than stars but bigger than planets—live a lonely life as they age. Over time they lose the companion brown dwarf that was born alongside them and the objects drift their separate ways.

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The giant planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, is revisited by Hubble in images taken Jan. 5-6, 2024, capturing both sides of the planet. The many large storms and small white clouds are a hallmark of activity in Jupiter's atmosphere.

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A new Webb study of two protostars, so young that they have not yet formed planets, has found a variety of molecules ranging from relatively simple ones like methane to complex compounds like acetic acid (familiar to cooks as an ingredient in vinegar). These molecules constitute key ingredients for worlds that might one day host life.

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The best measurements from Hubble show the universe is now expanding faster than predicted based on observations of how it looked shortly after the big bang. Some scientists suggested that Hubble observations are wrong due to some creeping inaccuracy in its deep-space yardstick. However, Webb’s sharp infrared views of milepost markers known as Cepheids agree with Hubble data.

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In the astronomy field, the term “nearby” is quite relative. Neighboring galaxies to our home galaxy, the Milky Way, are a few million light-years away. In contrast, some of the most distant galaxies ever detected, closer to the Big Bang, are billions of light-years away.

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Space Telescope Live provides an interactive way to explore the most accurate, up-to-date, publicly available information on current, past, and upcoming observations by NASA’s Hubble and Webb space telescopes.

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Delivering on its promise to transform our understanding of the early universe, the James Webb Space Telescope is probing galaxies near the dawn of time. One of these is the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when the universe was just a tiny fraction of its current age. One of the youngest and most distant galaxies ever observed, it is also one of the most enigmatic. Why is it so bright? Webb appears to have found the answer.

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New observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have provided the first direct evidence of what is likely a neutron star, revealed by the effects of its high-energy emission, at the center of the Supernova 1987A remnant.

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When galaxies go bump in the night, they cook-up new generations of stars that might otherwise have never been born. These close encounters between galaxies cause a gravitational tug-of-war.

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With a panoramic view 200 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared view, the sheer amount of data captured by the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will change the landscape of astronomy.

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Astronomers have long planned to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to obtain the highest resolution near- and mid-infrared images ever taken of nearby spiral galaxies, and today they are publicly available.

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Astronomers using Hubble observed the smallest exoplanet where water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere.

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Astronomers plan to use data from the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to hone in on globular cluster star streams, potentially of our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, to look for gaps created by passing clumps of dark matter. What they learn may deepen our understanding of this mysterious, major “ingredient” in the universe.

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Like a lifeguard on duty, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has scanned the horizon and spotted distant galaxies shaped like volleyballs, frisbees, pool noodles, and surfboards.

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Since the 1980s, the planetary system around the star Beta Pictoris has continued to fascinate scientists. Even after decades of study, it still holds surprises.

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Astronomers using Hubble have found the location of the farthest and brightest fast radio burst ever detected. It exploded within a collection of merging galaxies that existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old.

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Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) that may display possible aurorae, like the familiar Northern Lights on our world. This is an unexpected mystery because the brown dwarf, known as W1935, is an isolated object in space, with no nearby star to create an aurora.

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An illustration depicting the exoplanet WASP 121-b. By combining several years of Hubble observations with computer modelling, astronomers have found evidence for massive cyclones swirling on the hellish planet, that are repeatedly created and destroyed due to the large temperature difference between the daytime and nighttime sides of the planet.

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This is a Hubble photo of Saturn taken on October 22, 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 850 million miles from Earth.

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In this Hubble image of dwarf galaxy UGC 8091, the dizzying interplay of matter and energy bubbles up to create dazzling blue, newborn stars that look like a festive string of lights.

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When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the planet appeared to be a nearly featureless, solid blue ball. Now, Webb shows us an infrared view that is much more dynamic and intriguing.

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Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars, since they form like stars through gravitational collapse, but never gain enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion.

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Objects in space reveal different aspects of their composition and behavior at different wavelengths of light. Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is one of the most well-studied objects in the Milky Way across the wavelength spectrum.

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Space is a harsh environment, but some areas are even harsher than others. A star-forming region known as the Lobster Nebula is host to some of the most massive stars in our galaxy. Massive stars are hotter, and therefore emit more ultraviolet (UV) light.

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A bright field of gas sweeps around the edge of a dark, dense cloud where young stars are bursting out to take their place in the universe.

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Hubble measured the size of LTT 1445Ac, the nearest transiting Earth-sized exoplanet, and found it to be almost exactly Earth’s diameter.

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In 2008 NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope found a protoplanetary disk unlike any other. The dusty disk of gas surrounding the young Sun-like star SZ Chamaeleontis (SZ Cha) was being pummeled by extreme ultraviolet radiation – something previously seen only in computer models, never in the real universe. Planets in this system would have more time to form than in a disk being evaporated by X-rays, which is the norm. However, when the James Webb Space Telescope followed up on SZ Cha, it found nothing out of the ordinary – no abundance of ultraviolet radiation. In a short space of cosmic time, conditions in SZ Cha’s disk had changed, leaving astronomers to untangle meaning from the mismatched data and its implications for the formation of other solar systems.

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When two flagship observatories unite, they reveal a wealth of new details only possible through their combined power. Webb and Hubble have joined forces to study the galaxy cluster MACS0416, located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth. Their combined data yields a prismatic panorama of blues and reds – colors that give clues to the distances of the galaxies.

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The James Webb Space Telescope has witnessed the planet-forming process in action, revealing a connection between water vapor in the inner disk and the drifting of icy pebbles from the outer disk. This finding opens exciting, new vistas into the study of rocky planet formation.

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The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jennifer Lotz as the Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Dr. Lotz will begin her five-year appointment as STScI Director starting February 12, 2024.

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Although the Crab Nebula is one of the most well-studied supernova remnants, questions about its progenitor and the nature of the explosion that created it still remain unanswered. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is on the case as it sleuths for any clues that remain within the supernova remnant. Webb’s infrared sensitivity and spatial resolution are offering astronomers a more comprehensive understanding of the still-expanding scene.

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Using Webb’s spectacular sensitivity, scientists captured the first mid-infrared spectrum from space of a kilonova, which marked Webb’s first direct look at an individual heavy element from such an event.

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Jupiter has some of the most conspicuous atmospheric features in our solar system. The planet’s Great Red Spot, large enough to envelop Earth, is nearly as well known as some of the various rivers and mountains on the planet we call home. However, much like Earth, Jupiter is ever-changing, and there’s much about the planet we have yet to learn. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is unlocking some of those mysteries, revealing new features of Jupiter we’ve never seen before, including a high-speed jet speeding over the planet’s equator. While the jet stream is not as visually apparent or stunning as some of Jupiter’s other features, it’s giving researchers incredible insight into how the layers of the planet’s atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb will aid in these investigations in the future.

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Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected evidence for quartz nanocrystals in the high-altitude clouds of WASP-17 b, a hot Jupiter exoplanet 1,300 light-years from Earth.

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Within a neighboring dwarf galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) lies a dramatic region of star birth – NGC 346, shown here. As the brightest and largest star-forming region in the SMC, it has been studied intensely by a variety of telescopes. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showed a visible-light view filled with thousands of stars. More recently, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope offered a near-infrared vista highlighting both cool and warm dust. Now, Webb has turned its mid-infrared gaze to NGC 346, revealing streamers of gas and dust studded with bright patches filled with young protostars.

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A very rare, strange burst of bright light in the universe just got even stranger—thanks to the eagle eye of the Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn't expected to be found, far away from any galaxy where stars typically blow up.

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Hubble zoomed in for a close-up look at one sliver of the Cygnus Loop nebula–a huge bubble of glowing gasses. Gossamer filaments resembling wrinkles in a bedsheet stretched across two light-years were found.

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For as long as humans have gazed into the night sky, we have wondered about life beyond the Earth. Scientists now know that several places in our solar system might have conditions suitable for life.

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The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has appointed Dr. Kristen McQuinn as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Mission Head. She will assume this role in mid-January 2024.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution look at Herbig-Haro 211 (HH 211), a bipolar jet traveling through interstellar space at supersonic speeds.

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Carbon-bearing molecules have been discovered in the atmosphere of the habitable zone exoplanet K2-18 b by an international team of astronomers using data from the NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. These results are consistent with an exoplanet that may contain ocean-covered surface underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. This discovery provides a fascinating glimpse into a planet unlike anything else in our Solar System, and raises interesting prospects about potentially habitable worlds elsewhere in the Universe.

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A compact grouping of hundreds of thousands of stars nestled among the billions of stars in the Milky Way's disk appears in this Hubble image. Terzan 12 is among about 150 ancient globular star clusters orbiting our galaxy.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered new details in Supernova 1987A with its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument. Structures, some only visible in infrared wavelengths, provide clues into the development of supernovas over time.

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Astronomers have uncovered a link between Neptune’s shifting cloud abundance and the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle that increases the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the planet. This discovery is based on three decades of observations by Hubble.

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Detecting extremely distant stars, or those closest in time to the big bang, can provide insights into the first few chapters of the history of our universe. In 2022, the Hubble Space Telescope broke its own record, and spotted the most distant star yet. This star, nicknamed Earendel, emitted its light within the universe’s first billion years.

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The Fishhook. The Thin One. These are just two of the striking targets revealed in new detail by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In July 2022 Webb observed El Gordo, a galaxy cluster that existed 6.2 billion years after the big bang. It was selected as the most massive galaxy cluster known at that time in cosmic history.