Tag Archives: "STScI"

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What looks like a single large, bright star but is two shines with bright purple diffraction spikes at the center of a large, diffuse cylinder of gas and dust that is tipped to the right. At the center is a bright pink clumpy cloud that takes up about 25% of the view. The pink region has some holes. Beyond that are two large rings tipped at a 60-degree angle that mark the ends of the cylinder. They appear joined at top left and bottom right. The edges form shallow V-shapes that go inward. The rings appear orange at top left and bottom right, and are blue at bottom and center right. There is diffuse orange material around the body. The black background of space is speckled with tiny stars and galaxies mostly in blues and yellows. A bigger blue star with spikes is just below and to the left of the central stars, but it is slightly smaller. Areas Webb did not observe appear black along the top edges, a thin vertical near the nebula at top left, and at the bottom left and right corners.

With NASA’s Webb, Dying Star’s Energetic Display Comes Into Full Focus

Gas and dust ejected by a dying star at the heart of NGC 1514 came into complete focus thanks to ...
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Graphic titled “Hubble Space Telescope – Observations of Uranus,” with 16 images of Uranus, arranged in a 4 by 4 grid showing changes in appearance of Uranus as observed by Hubble between 2002 and 2022. Columns are labeled with observation year, from left to right: 2002; 2012; 2015; and 2022. Rows are labeled from top to bottom: visible light; visible and near infrared; aerosols/haze; and methane depletion. In the visible light images in the top row, Uranus appears blue-green with faint vertical bends of slightly lighter or darker color. In the visible and near infrared images in the second row, Uranus is very colorful, with deep neon blue to neon green bands within an orange-red glow that outlines the edge of the planet. In the two bottom rows of images, Uranus appears in grayscale, with vertical bands ranging from dark gray to almost white. All four rows of images show changes from observation to observation (left to right). For a given year, all four images in the column show similar banding patterns.

20-Year Hubble Study of Uranus Yields New Atmospheric Insights

The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, ...
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A two-panel horizontal image. On the left is Neptune, as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a blue circle, tilted about 25 degrees to the left. There are white smudges at 7 o’clock and just above 5 o’clock. At the right is an opposing view of the planet, using data from Hubble and Webb. It is a multi-hued blue orb. There are white smudges in the same spots as the image on the left, but also at the center of the planet and at the top. There are cyan smudges vertically along the right side, with the top of the smudging more translucent than the bottom.

NASA’s Webb Captures Neptune’s Auroras For First Time

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured bright auroral activity on Neptune. Auroras occur when energetic ...
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A large, black circle representing a black hole occupies the right third of the frame in this illustration. Thick, clumpy orange streaks arc above and below it, essentially surrounding it. The top arc extends down to the lower left and then curves around in front of the black hole to form a disk that is tilted toward the viewer. Near the inner edge of the disk, several bright, whiter spots have blue filaments looping above them, representing flares. The words “Artist’s Concept” appear in the bottom left corner in gray.

Webb Reveals Rapid-Fire Light Show From Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way appears to be having a party, complete with a ...
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A large galaxy is at center, and a significantly smaller galaxy is to its left. The large galaxy, nicknamed the Bullseye, is mostly face-on, but the top appears slightly tilted away. It has several rings. Its circular core is bright white at the very center, but light yellow overall. Going outward, there are gaps between the rings. The core is surrounded by two slightly lighter yellow rings, which also appear to be overlapping. The next ring is slightly more transparent and yellow. The two or three rings that are farther out are bluer, sometimes with blue clumps. The widest ring is also blue, but also the most transparent. At 9 o’clock is a small dwarf galaxy. It is about the same size as the yellow core of the Bullseye. The dwarf galaxy is blue, with many dots. It looks like the edge of the Bullseye might touch the dwarf galaxy. Both galaxies are set on the black background of space, which is dotted with a range of galaxies in different shapes, colors, and sizes, along with one foreground star at left.

Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings ...
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NASA's Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

NASA’s Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the ...
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Three rows show Webb images of the same region taken on three different dates. The top row is labeled August 19, 2024. The middle row is labeled September 16, 2024. The bottom row is labeled September 30, 2024. Each row shows two images split by a vertical black bar where there is no data. Each image is speckled with dozens of white stars, some showing Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes, against the black background of space. The images also show tightly packed, glowing red filaments that resemble muscle fibers or wood grain. While the background stars are the same in every row, the filaments change noticeably. In the top row, the filaments extend horizontally from upper left to lower right. In the middle and bottom rows, the filaments extend from lower left to upper right, and seem to shift slightly downward in position, with the last the lowest.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Layers of Interstellar Dust, Gas

Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star ...
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A frame split horizontally down the middle. At left is a galaxy cluster and background galaxies, showing thousands of overlapping objects at various distances. The background is black. The galaxies’ colors vary, including white, pink, orange, and blue. Most galaxies appear as ovals or dots. Just above center is a bright white oversized oval, a supergiant elliptical galaxy. Around it are many thin, long orange or pink arcs. These are background galaxies that appear stretched and distorted. To the bottom right is the outline of a small box. On the right side is a zoomed in view of this area. There are two smaller circular outlines flanking a larger central oval outline, labeled Firefly Sparkle galaxy. Within it is a long line, pointing from bottom left to top right with 10 circular star clusters in pink, purple, and blue. The circled galaxy to the bottom left is labeled Companion 1 and looks like a bright red dot. At top right, the circled galaxy labeled Companion 2 is lighter red and surrounded by a red disk.

Found: First Actively Forming Galaxy as Lightweight as Young Milky Way

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around ...
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A two panel image. The top image is Webb’s view of the Sombrero galaxy, the bottom image is Hubble’s view. In the Webb view, the galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the center. There is clear inner disk that has speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. In the Hubble view, the galaxy is an oblong, pale white disk with a glowing core over the inner disk. The outer disk is darker and clumpy.

Hats Off to NASA’s Webb: Sombrero Galaxy Dazzles in New Image

In a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a galaxy named for its resemblance to a broad-brimmed Mexican ...
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A two-panel image split down the middle vertically. At the left is the Vega disk as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The disk is perfectly circular, and at the center is a black spot blocking out the bright glow of a star. Closer to the center, the disk is white. Radial striations extend out from the center, giving a ripple effect to the disk like the end of a sausage casing. The outer edge of the circular disk is blue. At the right, the Webb image of the disk is an orange colored, smooth, fuzzy halo. The inner disk is whiter toward the center, and there is darker lane between the inner disk and the more orange outer disk. The disk is also perfectly circular, with a black circle in the center due to lack of data from saturation.

NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega

A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an ...
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Two spiral galaxies take the shape of a colorful beaded mask that sits above the nose. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller, taking up a little over a quarter of the view. The galaxy at right, NGC 2207, takes up half the view, with its spiral arms reaching the edges. IC 2163 has a bright orange core, with two prominent spiral arms that rotate counter clockwise and become straighter towards the ends, the left side extending almost to the edge. Its arms are a mix of pink, white, and blue, with an area that takes the shape of an eyelid appearing whitest. NGC 2207 has a very bright core. Overall, it appears to have larger, thicker spiral arms that spin counter clockwise. This galaxy also contains more and larger blue areas of star formation that poke out like holes from the pink spiral arms. In the middle, the galaxies’ arms appear to overlap. The edges show the black background of space, including extremely distant galaxies that look like orange and red smudges, and a few foreground stars.

‘Blood-Soaked’ Eyes: NASA’s Webb, Hubble Examine Galaxy Pair

The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, ...
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A bright binary star surrounded by a colorful nebula on the black background of space.

NASA’s Hubble Sees a Stellar Volcano

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided a dramatic and colorful close-up look at one of the most rambunctious stars in ...
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