Webb's First Deep Field: Two Arcs Are the Same Galaxy (NIRISS Emission Spectra)
Want to go on a galactic treasure hunt? Data known as spectra from NASA’s Webb Telescope make it easy to find – and match up – cosmic prizes! At far left is a near-infrared image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. A group of massive galaxies below and to the right of the bright central star have...
Webb’s First Deep Field (MIRI and NIRCam Images Side by Side)
Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is a technicolor landscape when viewed in mid-infrared light by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Compared to Webb’s near-infrared image at right, the galaxies and stars are awash in new colors. Start by comparing the largest bright blue star. At right, it has very...
Stephan's Quintet (NIRCam + MIRI Image)
An enormous mosaic of Stephan’s Quintet is the largest image to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The visual grouping of five galaxies was...
Webb's First Deep Field (NIRCam Image)
Thousands of galaxies flood this near-infrared image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. High-resolution imaging from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined with a natural effect known as gravitational lensing made this finely detailed image possible. First, focus on the galaxies responsible for...
Stephan's Quintet (MIRI Compass Image)
Image of Stephan's Quintet, HCG 92, captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as...
Stephan's Quintet (MIRI IFU)
Stephan’s Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies located in the constellation Pegasus. Together, they are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are truly close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and...
Stephan's Quintet (MIRI Spectra)
Stephan’s Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies located in the constellation Pegasus. Together, they are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are truly close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and...
Stephan's Quintet (NIRSpec IFU)
Stephan’s Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies located in the constellation Pegasus. Together, they are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are truly close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and...
Stephan's Quintet (MIRI Image)
With its powerful, mid-infrared vision, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows never-before-seen details of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies. MIRI pierced through dust-enshrouded regions to reveal huge shock waves and tidal tails, gas and stars stripped from the outer...
Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam Image Compass)
The bright star at the center of NGC 3132, while prominent when viewed by NASA’s Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star’s diffraction spikes, is the nebula’s...
Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam Image)
The bright star at the center of NGC 3132, while prominent when viewed by NASA’s Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star’s diffraction spikes, is the nebula’s...
Southern Ring Nebula (MIRI Image)
NASA’s Webb Telescope has revealed the cloak of dust around the second star, shown at left in red, at the center of the Southern Ring Nebula for the first time. It is a hot, dense white dwarf star. As it transformed into a white dwarf, the star periodically ejected mass – the shells of...
Southern Ring Nebula (MIRI Image)
NASA’s Webb Telescope has revealed the cloak of dust around the second star, shown at left in red, at the center of the Southern Ring Nebula for the first time. It is a hot, dense white dwarf star. As it transformed into a white dwarf, the star periodically ejected mass – the shells of...
Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI Images Side by Side)
This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right, from NASA’s Webb Telescope. This scene was created by a white dwarf star – the remains of a star like our Sun after it shed its outer layers and...
Exoplanet WASP-96 b (NIRISS Transit Light Curve)
A light curve from Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) shows the change in brightness of light from the WASP-96 star system over time as the planet transits the star. A transit occurs when an orbiting planet moves between the star and the telescope, blocking some of...
NASA’s Webb Reveals Steamy Atmosphere of Distant Planet in Exquisite Detail
Webb’s enormous mirror and precise instruments join forces to capture the most detailed spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere to date.
NIRCam Compass Image of the “Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina
What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured...
Combined NIRCam and MIRI Compass Image of the “Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined the capabilities of the telescope’s two cameras to create a never-before-seen view of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this...
NIRCam Image of the “Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina
What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured...
Combined NIRCam and MIRI Image of the “Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope combined the capabilities of the telescope’s two cameras to create a never-before-seen view of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this...
Lensed Star Earendel
The Sunrise Arc galaxy with lensed star Earendel in the first billion years
Lensed Star Earendel
The Sunrise Arc galaxy with lensed star Earendel in the first billion years
Hen 2-10
A pullout of the central region dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 traces an outflow, or bridge of hot gas 230 light-years long, connecting the galaxy’s massive black hole and a star-forming region. Hubble data on the velocity of the outflow from the black hole, as well as the age of the young...
Hen 2-10
Dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 sparkles with young stars in this Hubble visible-light image. The bright region at the center, surrounded by pink clouds and dark dust lanes, indicates the location of the galaxy’s massive black hole and active stellar nurseries.
AB Aurigae b Illustration
This is an artist’s impression of a massive, newly forming exoplanet called AB Aurigae b. Researchers used new and archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope to confirm this protoplanet is forming through an intense and violent process, called disk instability. Disk...
Hickson Compact Group 40
Celebrating Hubble’s 32nd Birthday with a Galaxy Grouping
AB Aurigae b Hubble Images Compass
Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB...
AB Aurigae b Hubble Images
Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB...
A Sample of Images from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys
Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) forever changed our view of the universe. Two decades into its epic mission, ACS continues to deliver ground-breaking science and stunning images. ACS has taken over 125,000 pictures and spawned numerous discoveries. Here is a portfolio of some of the...
Microlensing Black Hole
The star-filled sky in this Hubble Space Telescope photo is located in the direction of the Galactic center. The brightness of stars are monitored to see if any change in apparent brightness is made by a foreground object drifting in front of them. The warping of space by the interloper would...
MINI-JET FOUND NEAR MILKY WAY’S SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
Hubble Finds a Smoldering Remnant in a Blast From the Past
Hubble Celebrates Halloween With A Glowering, Dying Star
A hypnotizing vortex? A peek into a witch's cauldron? A giant space-spiderweb? In reality, it's a look at the red giant star CW Leonis as photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope — just in time for celebrating Halloween with creepy celestial sights. The orange-red "cobwebs" are dusty...
Researchers will use all four instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope to study the three most distant quasars yet discovered. They will obtain new measurements of the masses of their central supermassive black holes, detail the stars and composition of their host galaxies, and observe...
A New Understanding of Galaxy Evolution with NASA’s Roman Space Telescope
Roman will combine the power of imaging and spectroscopy to gain fresh insights into how the universe works
Hubble’s Views of M13 (2010) and M3 (2019)
To investigate the physics underpinning white dwarf evolution, astronomers compared cooling white dwarfs in two massive collections of stars: the globular clusters M3 and M13. These two clusters share many physical properties such as age and metallicity but the populations of stars which will...
Hubble Finds Evidence of Persistent Water Vapor in Europa's Atmosphere
Ice Sublimating Off the Surface Replenishes a Tenuous Envelope
Multiwavelength View of Sagittarius A*
An enormous swirling vortex of hot gas glows with infrared light, marking the approximate location of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. This multiwavelength composite image includes near-infrared light captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and was the...
Winds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot
By analyzing images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope from 2009 to 2020, researchers found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the Great Red Spot, set off by the outer green circle, have increased by up to 8 percent from 2009 to 2020 and exceed 400 miles per hour. In...
ALMA Images of Nearby Protoplanetary Disks
JWST Chemistry in planet-forming regions The researchers will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to survey 17 of the 20 nearby protoplanetary disks observed by Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in 2018 for its Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project...
Rings of Relativity
The narrow galaxy elegantly curving around its spherical companion in this image is a fantastic example of a truly strange and very rare phenomenon. This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, depicts GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax...
Neptune
In observations taken on September 7th, researchers found that Neptune’s dark spot, which recently was found to have reversed course from moving toward the equator , is still visible in this image, along with a darkened northern hemisphere. There is also a notable dark, elongated circle...
Uranus
Hubble’s October 25th view of Uranus puts the planet’s bright northern polar hood in the spotlight. It’s springtime in the northern hemisphere and the increase in ultraviolet radiation from the Sun seems to be causing the polar region to brighten. Researchers aren’t sure why. It could be a...
Saturn
Hubble’s new look at Saturn on September 12 shows rapid and extreme color changes of the bands in the planet’s northern hemisphere, where it is now early autumn. The bands have varied throughout Hubble observations in both 2019 and 2020. Notably, Saturn’s iconic hexagonal storm, first...
Jupiter
Hubble’s September 4th photo of Jupiter displays the ever-changing landscape of its turbulent atmosphere, where several new storms are making their mark, and the pace of color changes near the planet’s equator is continuing to surprise researchers. The planet’s equatorial zone has remained a...
'Double' Galaxy Mystifies Hubble Astronomers
Galaxy Cluster's Gravity Produces Mirror Images of Distant Galaxy Behind It
Outer Planets Grand Tour
GRAVITATIONALLY LENSED REQUIEM GALAXIES
These images are composites from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The boxed and pullout images show two of the six, distant, massive galaxies where scientists found star formation has ceased due to the depletion of a fuel source—cold...
Galaxies AM2115-273 and AM0002-503
ARP-MADORE2115-273 is a rarely observed pair of colliding galaxies in the southern hemisphere. These Hubble observations provide Hubble’s first high-resolution glimpse at this intriguing system. ARP-MADORE0002-503 is a large spiral galaxy with unusual, extended spiral arms, at a distance of...
Hubble Captures NGC 2276
This spectacular image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the trailing arms of NGC 2276, a spiral galaxy 120 million light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus. At first glance, the delicate tracery of bright spiral arms and dark dust lanes resembles countless other spiral...
Hubble’s View of Ganymede in 1996
This image presents Jupiter’s moon Ganymede as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 1996. Located over 600 million kilometers away, Hubble can follow changes on the moon and reveal other characteristics at ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. Astronomers have now used archival...
Debris Disk Around Star Beta Pictoris
A debris disk, which includes comets, asteroids, rocks of various sizes, and plenty of dust, orbits the star Beta Pictoris, which is blocked at the center of this 2012 image by a coronagraph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the visible-light view of the system. NASA’s James Webb Space...
Comet ATLAS
COMET ATLAS WAS A BLAST FROM THE PAST About 5,000 years ago a comet swept within 23 million miles of the sun, closer than the innermost planet Mercury. The comet must have been a spectacular sight to those young civilizations across Eurasia and North Africa that were arising at the end of the...
MACSJ 0138
THREE TIMES A CHARM: HUBBLE SPOTS THREE IMAGES OF A DISTANT SUPERNOVA
This is an artist’s concept of a galaxy with a brilliant quasar at its center. A quasar is a very bright, distant and active supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Among the brightest objects in the universe, a quasar’s light outshines that of all the...
ILLUSTRATION OF NEARBY BROWN DWARF
Observations of a nearby brown dwarf suggest that it has a mottled atmosphere with scattered clouds and mysterious dark spots reminiscent of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, as shown in this artist's concept. The nomadic object, called 2MASS J22081363+2921215, resembles a carved Halloween pumpkin,...
NGC1052-DF2
Hubble Captures a Ghostly Galaxy This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot reveals an unusual galaxy that researchers call a “see-through galaxy.” The giant cosmic cotton ball is so diffuse and its ancient stars are so spread out that distant galaxies in the background can be seen through it. Called...
Extended Groth Strip (EGS)
The Extended Groth Strip, named after Princeton University physicist Edward Groth, is a small region in the constellation Ursa Major, based on the results of a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Extended Groth Strip is 1.1 degrees long by 0.15 degrees wide (70.5 x 10.1...
AG Carinae
Hubble Captures Giant Star on the Edge of Destruction
HR 8799 EXOPLANET SYSTEM
LEFT: This is an image of the star HR 8799 taken by Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in 1998. A mask within the camera (coronagraph) blocks most of the light from the star. In addition, software has been used to digitally subtract more starlight....
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