SCIENCE NEWS

Action! NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Begins Capturing the Greatest Cosmic Movie Ever Made

$Thousands of galaxies appear across the black background of space. The galaxies range in size, from big blobs and larger face-on spirals to short lines and tiny dots. The galaxies appear in a variety of colors, including orange, white, pink, and blue. One prominent foreground star appears toward the lower right with several diffraction spikes. A white square highlights one tiny pinpoint of blue light in the top third, which is blown up in a box above it and labeled MXDFz4.4. The galaxy has a light blue core with some yellow and red blotches around its edges.$

Hubble Details Early Galaxy Transforming Neighborhood

Comparison of three telescope images side by side. They are roughly spherical but pixelated, with more intense color saturation in the center. From left to right: smallest sphere is blue and labeled H2O, orange is larger and labeled CO2, and red is largest and labeled CO. A scale bar at the lower left is labeled 1300 km/1 arcsecond and is about one fourth of each of the three images. A compass at the lower right shows north pointing up to 12 o’clock, east pointing left to 9 o’clock, and a fainter arrow labeled to Sun pointing down to 8 o’clock.

NASA’s Webb Finds Clues to Ancient, Distant Origin of Comet 3I/ATLAS

AURA NEWS

Beth Willman Named Interim Director of NSF NOIRLab

Rocket blasting off of the launchpad with a large plume of smoke beneath it.

Roman Space Telescope Successfully Launches, Beginning a New Era in Surveys of the Universe

2026 AURA Annual Meeting

AURA enables astronomical discovery and promotes broad engagement in exploring the Universe.

CENTERS

Montage of the telescopes of NOIRLab with data connecting them

NSF NOIRLab

The preeminent US national center for ground-based, nighttime optical and infrared astronomy.

NSF NSO

Advancing knowledge of the Sun, the dominant external influence on Earth and the local archetype of a typical star.

STScI

Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is a multi-mission operations center for NASA’s flagship observatories and a world-class astronomical research center.