Arp 107, a pair of interacting galaxies, shines brightly in high-resolution infrared light. A collision, which occurred hundreds of millions ago, created a tenuous bridge of gas and dust that connects the two galaxies, and started a new wave of star formation that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures clearly.
Using Hubble, astronomers have found more black holes in the early universe than previously thought. They went black hole hunting in the landmark Hubble Ultra Deep Field, first revealed in 2004, and in following observations to look for supermassive black holes.
How do environmental factors affect the star formation process? To help answer this question, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope examined the fringes of our Milky Way galaxy. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared imaging capabilities enabled scientists to examine a star-forming area reminiscent of our galaxy during its early formation.
Hubble and Chandra have uncovered a pair of supermassive black holes that are just 300 light-years apart. They are buried deep inside the heart of a pair of colliding galaxies that will eventually merge to make a bigger black hole.
A Martian mystery: What happened to the water that once covered the Red Planet? Scientists know some of it went deep underground, but what became of the rest? Hubble and MAVEN teamed up to help scientists understand the history of water on Mars.
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope were surprised to find a distant, red galaxy distorted into the shape of a question mark. A specific, rarely-seen type of natural gravitational lens is causing the galaxy to appear multiple times.
The universe may seem static, only capable of being captured in still frames, but that is far from the truth. It is actually ever-changing, just not on timescales clearly visible to humans. NASA’s upcoming Roman Space Telescope will bridge this gap in time, opening the way to the dynamic universe.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft measured the feeble background glow that comes from myriad galaxies filling the universe. The finding has settled a long-standing mystery about the source of background light.
Not long after the James Webb Space Telescope began science operations in July 2022, breathless headlines proclaimed that observations of distant galaxies were “breaking theories of cosmic evolution.” Astronomers had found galaxies that appeared much brighter than expected. If all of that light came from stars, then those galaxies would have formed so many stars, so quickly, that the leading theory for the universe’s formation and evolution could not explain them. New research finds that some of those early galaxies are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Much of their light came, not from stars, but from a hot accretion disk surrounding a supermassive black hole.
If alien astronomers in a nearby star system had a telescope like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and they pointed it toward our solar system, then Jupiter might look very much like this new Webb image of the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab. It is one of the coldest exoplanets to be directly detected, with an estimated temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).
Since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, thousands of planets orbiting stars outside of our solar system have been confirmed through a myriad of different methods, including direct imaging, gravitational microlensing, measuring transits, and astrometry.
The James Webb Space Telescope operates around the clock, frequently astonishing researchers with its highly detailed — and incredibly precise — infrared images and data. These wavelengths of light, which lie beyond what our eyes can see, were largely out of reach at this level of detail until Webb began taking science observations July 12, 2022.
Measuring the dynamic movements of stars can help us improve our understanding of dark matter and how this invisible “glue” is dispersed in galaxies. A team of astronomers set their sights on the Draco dwarf galaxy, a system located about 250,000 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers have identified the nearest black hole to Earth–weighing an estimated 8,200 solar masses–using 20 years of Hubble telescope observations. It is in the heart of the globular star cluster Omega Centauri, located 17,700 light-years away.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is celebrating U.S. Independence Day with an observation of the protostar, hidden inside the dark molecular cloud L1527 in mid-infrared light, as it evolves. This vibrant new view highlights the behavior of this young object and traces the different concentrations of gas and dust surrounding the protostar.
Combining data from NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, a team from NASA's Universe of Learning at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland has produced a breathtaking new 3D visualization of the towering "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula.
Some of the greatest, and most interesting, astronomical discoveries have come as a surprise to researchers, even when examining the most well-studied areas of the sky.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided a new view of the Crab, including the highest-quality infrared data yet available to aid scientists as they explore the detailed structure and chemical composition of the remnant. These clues are helping to unravel the unusual way that the star exploded about 1,000 years ago.
Astronomers have used new and archival data from Hubble to revisit one of the strangest stars in our galaxy–40 years after it burst onto the scene as an extraordinarily bright and long-lived nova.
Using data from a deep Webb survey of the early universe, a team has identified 10 times more far-off supernovae than were previously known. This study is the first significant step toward more extensive surveys of ancient supernovae with Webb.
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