Many stars and galaxies including two spiral galaxies and three merging galaxies.

Ever-changing Universe Revealed in First Imagery From NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a major new scientific facility jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, released its first imagery today at an ...
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Composite shows four Hubble images in quarters. At top left is a crisp view of Mars in shades of orange, blues, and browns. At top right is planetary nebula NGC 2899, which is shaped like a single macaroni noodle, with its central torus appearing semi-transparent and blue and green, and its top and bottom edges in orange. At bottom left is a tiny portion of the Rosette Nebula. Very dark gray material shaped like a triangle takes up the center. At bottom right is barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 with a milky yellow center that forms a bar surrounded by multiple blue star-filled spiral arms that wrap up counterclockwise.

Hubble’s Window on the Universe: NASA Celebrates Hubble’s 35th Year in Orbit

In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35 years in Earth orbit, NASA is releasing an assortment of compelling images recently taken by Hubble, stretching from the planet Mars to star-forming regions, and a neighboring galaxy ...
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Undulating waves of gold, orange and red fill this image. Dark black areas are surrounded by deep red and orange indicating sunspots.

Largest Imaging Spectro-Polarimeter Achieves First Light at the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope

The U.S. National Science Foundation Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO) near the summit of Maui’s Haleakalā, reached a major milestone: achieving ...
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image with 4 sections

NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Cryo-NIRSP instrument offers unprecedented look at Alfvén waves

Over the last decade, scientists have confirmed the presence of a an important type of magnetized waves called Alfvén waves in the Sun’s outer atmosphere – i.e., the corona. These waves, specific to plasma environments ...
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The image is split into 2 parts. On the right is a fuzzy orange galaxy on a black background on the left is a start filed shoeing where the galaxy is on the sky.

NSF NOIRLab Astronomer Discovers Oldest Known Spiral Galaxy in the Universe

An international team led by NSF NOIRLab astronomer Christina Williams has discovered the most distant spiral galaxy known to date. Named Zhúlóng, meaning ‘Torch Dragon’ in Chinese mythology, this ultra-massive system existed just one billion ...
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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 mid-infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Its rings, which are only detected in ...
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black background with multicolor streaks . One very bright streak is top right.

Gemini South Observes Shape and Origin of Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4

Using observations from the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have constructed a 3D representation ...
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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, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered new insights ...
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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 particles, often originating from the Sun, become trapped in a planet’s magnetic field and eventually ...
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To blue and black speckled fans originate from the top and bottom of this image and meet in the middle.

Tantalizing Hints That Dark Energy is Evolving — New Results and Data Released by the DESI Project

The DESI collaboration has published a new analysis of dark energy using their first three years of collected data, which spans nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars. Combined with studies of the cosmic microwave background, ...
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Artist’s Illustration of a Sun from the viewpoint of a red planet.

Planetary System Found Around Nearest Single Star

Using in part the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have discovered four sub-Earth exoplanets orbiting Barnard’s ...
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Artist’s illustration of dwarf galaxy with active galactic nucleus

DESI Uncovers 300 New Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Plus 2500 New Active Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies

Within the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s early data, scientists have uncovered the largest samples ever of intermediate-mass black holes and dwarf galaxies hosting an active black hole, more than tripling the existing census of both ...
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