Latest News

• share
• favorite_border

A young planet whirling around a petulant red dwarf star is changing in unpredictable ways orbit-by-orbit. It is so close to its parent star that it experiences a consistent, torrential blast of energy, which evaporates its hydrogen atmosphere — causing it to puff off the planet. But during one orbit observed with Hubble, the planet looked like it wasn't losing any material at all, while an orbit observed with Hubble a year and a half later showed clear signs of atmospheric loss.

• share
• favorite_border

Like kittens, actively forming stars are balls of energy. But instead of being overtaken by the zoomies, stars emit energy in the form of jets, creating fantastic, textured scenes.

• share
• favorite_border

Water, water, everywhere – not in drops, but as steam. Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that thirsty planets in the PDS 70 system have access to a reservoir of water. Importantly, the water vapor was found within 100 million miles of the star – the region where terrestrial planets like Earth may be forming. (The Earth orbits 93 million miles from our Sun.)

• share
• favorite_border

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos, taken on December 19, 2022, nearly three months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA's DART mission. Hubble's sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. The boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble brightness measurements. They are drifting away from the asteroid at little more than a half-mile per hour.

• share
• favorite_border

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope caps a successful first year of science, and stunning imagery, with a detailed view of the closest star-forming region to Earth, the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, resulting in a dynamic image that belies the region’s relative quiet – and practically begs for explanation of what exactly we are looking at.

• share
• favorite_border

The Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach has released a new scientific visualization of data from the CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) Survey. The video represents Webb’s exploration of the region known as the Extended Groth Strip, revealing many galaxies that have never been seen before. It displays a wealth of galaxies across the universe and concludes on Maisie’s Galaxy, which resides 13.4 billion light-years away from Earth.

• share
• favorite_border

It’s a bonanza! The universe is absolutely teeming with black holes. Researchers have long known this, but less massive black holes that existed in the early universe were too dim to detect – that is until the James Webb Space Telescope began taking observations. Researchers behind the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey are among the first to begin plucking these bright, extremely distant objects from Webb’s highly detailed images and data.

• share
• favorite_border

Supernovae, the explosive deaths of stars, are some of the universe’s biggest bursts of energy and light. When they erupt, one supernova can shine even brighter than an entire galaxy. It’s a fitting reason for NGC 6946, located 22 million light-years away from Earth, to be nicknamed the Fireworks Galaxy. In the past century, nearly a dozen supernovae have been observed flashing in the arms of this galaxy. This includes Supernova 2004et and Supernova 2017eaw, which researchers are now studying with the James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). 
Their findings have been surprising—MIRI detected large amounts of dust within the ejecta of each of these objects. The mass found by researchers supports the theory that supernovae played a key role in supplying dust to the early universe.

• share
• favorite_border

Woven across our universe is a weblike structure of galaxies called the cosmic web. Galaxies are strung along filaments in this vast web, which also contains enormous voids.

• share
• favorite_border

Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are of a particular interest to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. As such, the study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers. An international team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a carbon compound known as methyl cation for the first time. This molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. It was found in a young star system with a protoplanetary disk, 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.

• share
• favorite_border

Experts created two new visual and auditory experiences to explore the complexity and beauty of a compact galaxy group known as Stephan’s Quintet. The guided three-dimensional visualization surveys the galaxies — their structures, characteristics, and interactions — captured in multiple wavelengths of light by some of NASA’s great observatories. The sonifications scan two-dimensional images of the quintet, translating the data into sound to reveal the depth and richness this intricate environment holds.

• share
• favorite_border

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has successfully measured the heat radiating from TRAPPIST-1 c, an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. With a dayside temperature of about 225 degrees Fahrenheit, it is the coolest rocky planet ever characterized using this method. Unfortunately for those hoping that the TRAPPIST-1 system is a true analog to our own, the results are a bit disappointing. While TRAPPIST-1 c is roughly the same size and mass as Venus and receives the same amount of radiation from its star, it appears unlikely to have the same thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. This indicates that the planet, and perhaps the system as a whole, may have formed with very little water. The result is the latest in the quest to determine whether planetary atmospheres can survive the violent environs of a red dwarf star.

• share
• favorite_border

Only a few hundred million years after the big bang, the cosmos was brimming with opaque hydrogen gas that trapped light at some wavelengths from stars and galaxies. Over the first billion years, the gas became fully transparent – allowing the light to travel freely. Researchers have long sought definitive evidence to explain this flip.

• share
• favorite_border

Artificial satellites photobomb about 10% of Hubble exposures on celestial targets. But a typical satellite trail is very thin and will affect less than 0.5% of a single Hubble exposure. Astronomers have developed tools for cleaning the images and improving the quality of Hubble science observations.

• share
• favorite_border

With its large, light-gathering mirror and infrared sensitivity, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is uniquely suited to study galaxies that existed in the early universe, just a few hundred million years after the big bang. Just over one whole month of Webb’s observing time is devoted to the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES. JADES will peer deeply into the universe to study some of the faintest and most distant galaxies. Among the program’s first findings: Hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 600 million years old, and galaxies that have undergone repeated bursts of star formation.

• share
• favorite_border

Enceladus—a tiny, icy moon of Saturn—is one of the most intriguing objects in the search for signs of life beyond our own planet.

• share
• favorite_border

Astronomers using Hubble have identified some of the best evidence yet for an intermediate-mass black hole weighing roughly 800 times our Sun's mass that may be lurking in the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth. The suspected black hole can’t be seen directly, but the motion of stars moving around the black hole betrays its presence.

• share
• favorite_border

Solar system scientists took NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on a treasure hunt in the asteroid belt, and what they didn’t find turned out to be as significant as what they did.

• share
• favorite_border

A new Webb Space Telescope image of the bright, nearby star Fomalhaut reveals its planetary system with details never seen before, including nested concentric rings of dust. These belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by embedded, unseen planets. Similarly, inside our solar system Jupiter corrals the asteroid belt of leftover debris that lies between us and the giant planet. Astronomers first discovered Fomalhaut’s disk in 1983. But there has never been a view as spectacular – or as revealing – as Webb’s.

• share
• favorite_border

Astronomers using Hubble have uncovered two eerie shadows from gas-and-dust disks encircling the star TW Hydrae. They are evidence for two unseen planets that have pulled dust into their orbits, which blocks light from the central star and makes shadows.