Slightly curved thin luminous lines from purple to turquoise to green to red and then yellow, run vertically over on a black background.

New Instrument at SOAR Achieves First Light with Observations of Remarkable Binary Star System

The SOAR Telescope, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, has received a major upgrade with the installation of the SOAR Telescope Echelle Spectrograph (STELES). The long-awaited instrument achieved first light in August with observations of ...
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A glowing ball with a gold halo and tail streaks to the right in the center of this image. The black background is cover with rainbow colored streaks throughout the image.

Gemini South Captures Growing Tail of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS During Educational Observing Program

Astronomers and students working together through a unique educational initiative have obtained a striking new image of the growing tail of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS. The observations reveal a prominent tail and glowing coma from this ...
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A close up image of the Sun with an orange wave-like structure in th middle and bright yellow sections above and below ir. It is covered in dark lines indicating the direction of the wave.

The NSF Inouye Solar Telescope Delivers Record-Breaking Images of Solar Flare, Coronal Loops

On August 8, 2024, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured the sharpest-ever images of a solar flare at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm), revealing dark coronal loop strands in ...
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An image titled “James Webb Space Telescope, Uranus, Discovery of Moon S 2025 U1”. At center is the planet Uranus, a blue globe with a large white spot occupying most of the planet. It’s surrounded by a series of rings that get brighter as you move outward. Beyond the rings are 14 labeled moons appearing as points of light. Just beyond the outermost ring at 10 o’clock, a faint moon is circled and labeled S 2025 U1. At far left, the brightest moon is labeled Miranda. Additional moons clockwise from Miranda are Puck, Cressida, Mab, Perdita, Desdemona, Belinda, Bianca, Ophelia, Rosalind, Portia, Cupid, and Juliet. At lower right are compass arrows with east pointing to 11 o’clock and north pointing to 2 o’clock. At bottom, a label reads NIRCam F150W2.

New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet’s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made ...
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At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.

As NASA Missions Study Interstellar Comet, Hubble Makes Size Estimate

A team of astronomers has taken the sharpest-ever picture of the unexpected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the crisp vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is one of many missions across NASA’s fleet of space telescopes slated to ...
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A glittering diagonal group of glowing yellow galaxies shine out of the image filled with glowing points of light.

DECam’s Deep View of Abell 3667 Illuminates the Past of a Galaxy Cluster and the Future of Astronomical Imaging

An actively merging galaxy cluster is featured in this image assembled from a total of 28 hours of observations with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation ...
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Two elliptical galaxies at upper right and lower left appear as fuzzy white ovals. At bottom center is a fuzzy purple blob outlined by a white box. White lines angle outward from the corners of the box to a blow-up of the purple blob. At the center is a white dot labeled HLX-1. The main image also has two bright stars with prominent diffraction spikes. The background of space is black, and is speckled with tiny white dots.

NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Spot Rare Type of Black Hole Eating a Star

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact ...
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Betelgeuse and Its Stellar Companion in Orion

Gemini North Discovers Long-Predicted Stellar Companion of Betelgeuse

Astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse using the NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ‘Alopeke instrument on Gemini North, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded ...
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Comet 3I/ATLAS Seen With Gemini North

Gemini North Observes Comet 3I/ATLAS

Interstellar objects are visitors from solar systems beyond our own, and the third ever such object, known as 3I/ATLAS, has just been discovered. Using the Gemini North telescope, astronomers have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes ...
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A section of the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a local star-forming region composed of gas, dust, and young stars. Four roughly circular areas are toward the center of the frame: a small oval toward the top left, a large circle in the top center, and two ovals at bottom left and right. Each circular area has a luminous blue glow, with the top center and bottom left areas the brightest. Brown-orange filaments of dust, which vary in density, surround these four bluish patches and stretch toward the frame’s edges. Small zones, such as to the left and right of the top-center blue circular area, appear darker and seemingly vacant of stars. Toward the center are small, fiery red clumps scattered among the brown dust. Many small, yellow-white stars are spread across the scene, some with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of Webb. A few larger blue-white stars with diffraction spikes are scattered throughout, mostly toward the top left and bottom right. In the top right corner is a bright red-orange oval.

NASA’s Webb Scratches Beyond Surface of Cat’s Paw for 3rd Anniversary

It’s the cat’s meow! To celebrate its third year of revealing stunning scenes of the cosmos in infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has “clawed” back the thick, dusty layers of a section within ...
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Gemini North and Gemini South Capture the Fading Light of SN 2025kg. Three panel image shows how the light faded with time.

International Gemini Observatory and SOAR Discover Surprising Link Between Fast X-ray Transients and the Explosive Death of Massive Stars

Using a combination of telescopes, including the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, and the SOAR telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, ...
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An image of a nearby star and its vicinity. The star itself has been blocked out and its bright light has been removed, appearing black. A dashed circle with a star symbol at the center of the image marks the star’s location. A fuzzy blue disk surrounds the star. An orange spot, near the star and inside this disk around 2 o’clock, is identified as a planet orbiting the star. A fainter orange spot at the lower left edge marks a distant star.

Likely Saturn-Mass Planet Imaged by NASA Webb Is Lightest Ever Seen

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have captured compelling evidence of a planet with a mass similar to Saturn orbiting the young nearby star TWA 7. If confirmed, this would represent Webb’s first direct ...
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