Look closely at this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and you’ll see galaxies of various shapes and sizes clustered together toward the center-left of the image. A few foreground stars shine brightly and are easily distinguished by the spikes that appear to extend outward from each star. These spikes, called diffraction spikes, are the […]
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals an enigmatic galaxy with a bright center and a face that hints at spiral structure, yet it holds no obvious spiral arms. Reddish-brown clumps and filaments of dust partially obscure the galaxy’s full face, while red, blue, and orange light from distant galaxies shines through its diffuse outer […]
A recently developed ultra-black coating not only efficiently absorbs light, but is also extremely thin and durable, enabling its potential use on starshades that could someday support the imaging of exoplanets and potentially facilitate the detection of life beyond our solar system.
The Milky Way’s galactic bulge, the bulbous region that surrounds the galactic center, contains a dense collection of stars, planets, and other free-floating objects. This region has been studied for decades with numerous ground-based and space-based telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. Soon, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be the […]
A new paper from NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announces that volunteers have essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs, with over 3,000 new discoveries made over the past 10 years since the project began. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas the size of Jupiter, less massive than stars. There’s one for every three or four stars near the Sun.
In this new picture from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, a spiral galaxy glittering with star clusters is the center of attention. NGC 3137 is located 53 million light-years away in the constellation Antlia (the Air Pump). As a nearby spiral galaxy, this target offers astronomers an excellent opportunity to study the cycle of stellar birth and death, […]
This shimmering region of star-formation, a close-up of the Trifid Nebula about 5,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in intricate detail by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The colors in Hubble’s visible light image, which marks the 36th anniversary of the mission’s launch on April 24, are reminiscent of an underwater scene filled with fine-grained sediments […]
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. IC 486 lies right on the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), around 380 million light-years from Earth. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, […]
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence […]
The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2026 class. The NHFP enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observations, simulations, experimentation, or instrument development. Over 650 applicants vied for the 2026 fellowships, representing an oversubscription rate of 27 […]