A rendering of the inner Solar System showing the asteroids discovered by Rubin in light teal. Known asteroids are dark blue. The rendering shows a total of almost 12,700 asteroids that were discovered with Rubin over the span of 1.6 years: 73 were discovered during the first early test observations using Rubin’s Commissioning Camera in late 2024 and released as part of Rubin’s Data Preview 1 in Summer 2025; 1514 were discovered during First Look observations in April and May 2025; and the recent 11,000+ asteroids were discovered using observations taken during Rubin’s early optimization surveys in Summer 2025. These are the locations of objects at the time of each object’s discovery. In the time since discovery, the objects have continued in their orbits around the Sun and dispersed from the narrow “pencil beam” rays seen in this graphic. See this in the animation of the model here

Early Data from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Reveals Over 11,000 New Asteroids

Scientists at NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, have submitted an unprecedented set of asteroid detections to the IAU ...
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a series of 8 greyscale diamond shaped images of a solar flare on a black background in 2 rows of 4.

New Solar Flare Observations Challenge Leading Theories

Using the NSF Daniel k. Inouye solar telescope, scientists captured highly detailed measurements of a fading solar flare. The findings reveal gaps in current models of how flares heat the sun’s lower atmosphere, pointing to ...
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Side-by-side comparison of Saturn observed at different wavelengths and times show how differently it appears in infrared, on the left, versus visible light, on the right. Left image is labeled Saturn, Webb Infrared Light, November 29, 2024. Right image is labeled Saturn, Hubble Visible Light, August 22, 2024. In infrared, Saturn has horizontal bands, with bands at the north and south poles appearing darker orange and lightening to tan as they approach the equator. The north and south poles glow a greenish-grey. The rings appear in an icy neon white. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Dione, and Enceladus. In visible, Saturn’s horizontal bands appear pale yellow, with some bands towards the north and south pole having a light blue hue. The rings appear bright white, glowing slightly less than Webb’s infrared image. White dots, representing several of Saturn’s moons, are labeled Janus, Mimas, and Epimetheus.

NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive Telescopic View of Saturn to Date

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Observing in complementary wavelengths of light, the two space observatories ...
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A time sequence of three panels side by side. From left to right, the panels are labeled November 8, 2025; November 9, 2025; and November 10, 2025. This series of images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the fragmenting comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), or K1 for short, was taken over the course of three consecutive days. The sequence shows the progressive disintegration of the comet over this brief period. Each panel features several bright, fuzzy, blue, streaking lights in a diagonal line from the upper left to the lower right of a black background. In the first panel, four comet-like objects appear. The largest is the second from the upper left. In the second panel, the largest object has broken into two pieces. In the third panel, the pieces appear to be moving away from each other along the invisible diagonal line.

NASA’s Hubble Unexpectedly Catches Comet Breaking Up

In a happy twist of fate, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope just witnessed a comet in the act of breaking apart. The chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule ...
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This image shows Star PicII-503 in Pictor II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. The right side is a pullout from the very starry field on the left. In the middle of the pullout on the right is a blurry white light that is Picll-503

Extremely Rare Second-Generation Star Discovered Inside Ancient Relic Dwarf Galaxy

Astronomers have discovered one of the most chemically primitive stars ever identified — an ancient stellar relic that preserves the chemical imprint of the very first stars in the Universe. This star, named PicII-503, resides ...
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An illustration of NSF NOIRLab's follow-up ecosystem. The telescopes pictured are connected by blue beams of light. The telescopes on the bottom have rainbow beam coming from them representing their observations.

First NSF NOIRLab Follow-Up Observations Triggered by NSF–DOE Rubin Alerts

NSF NOIRLab, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has completed end-to-end runs of its ecosystem for following up on alerts from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The runs demonstrated how multiple NOIRLab-developed software tools, ...
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Close up of the Sun with a dotted rectangular white box over the a part of the outer portion. There is a red line through the white box lengthwise.

Uncovering the Waves That Power the Sun’s Outer Atmosphere

Observations from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope—built and managed by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSF NSO) on Maui, Hawai‘i—are now offering a closer look than ever before ...
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Side-by-side images of the same nebula show how differently it appears in near-infrared, on the left, versus mid-infrared light, on the right. Left image is labeled NIRCam and the right is labeled MIRI. In near-infrared, the nebula’s outer bubble has a white edge and its inner clouds are orange, with a distinct dark lane cutting vertically through the center. Stars and background galaxies appear around the nebula and through the outer bubble. In mid-infrared, the outer bubble has a bluish tint and there is more material in the inner clouds, which are colored off-white. The vertical dark lane is still present but more interrupted and covered by the clouds. Material appears to be erupting out the top of the nebula, and this effect is mirrored to a lesser degree at the bottom, opposite end.

NASA’s Webb Examines Cranium Nebula

Two heads are better than one in the latest images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which reveal new detail in a mysterious, little-studied nebula surrounding a dying star.  ...
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This artist’s illustration represents the start of the alert stream from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The summit facility is shown on a rocky ridge. The night sky features stars and the glittering band of the Milky Way Galaxy. The sky is populated with multiple alert “pings,” representing individual alerts from Rubin that something in the sky has changed in brightness or position. Different icons represent various types of alerts, including asteroids, supernovae, active galactic nuclei, and variable stars.

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Launches Real-Time Discovery Machine for Monitoring the Night Sky

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has issued its first scientific alerts, marking a historic milestone in astrophysics. Expected to increase to seven million alerts per night, these first alerts start a new era of dynamic, real-time observation ...
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In the image center, an opaque oval cloud of gray gas aligned from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock hides a star. Two strong beams of light from the star emerge from large holes in both sides of the cloud, forming narrow cones extending toward 10 o’clock and 4 o’clock. The central cloud is surrounded by concentric, wispy shells of gas illuminated by the star’s light. The shells reflect extra light where they’re hit by the twin beams. A crowd of smaller stars with cross-shaped spikes over them surrounds the nebula on a black background.

NASA’s Hubble Captures Light Show Around Rapidly Dying Star

This stunning image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a dramatic interplay of light and shadow in the Egg Nebula, sculpted by freshly ejected stardust. Located approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Egg Nebula ...
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A wide field of view showing deep space, dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display six diffraction spikes. One galaxy is highlighted with a magnified image in a graphic pull-out box in the lower right corner. The galaxy is labeled MoM-z14 and appears as a blurry yellow blob with a small red area at its top.

NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries of the observable universe closer to cosmic dawn with the confirmation of a bright galaxy that existed 280 million ...
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A black background is filled with stars -small and large glowing white, red, yellow and blue.

Dark Energy Survey Scientists Release Analysis of All Six Years of Survey Data

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the Universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco ...
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