Astrophysics Stories

A spiral galaxy viewed tilted at a diagonal angle and toward the viewer. The core and the disk of the galaxy are different colors but are otherwise difficult to tell apart. The disc has wispy, ragged edges and many arcs of glowing, star-forming patches. A few distant galaxies are visible in the background around the spiral galaxy, as are several foreground stars.

Hubble Hunts Visible Light Sources of X-Rays

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the dwarf galaxy IC 776. This swirling collection of new and old stars is located in the constellation Virgo, in the Virgo galaxy cluster, 100 million light-years from Earth. Although IC 776 is…

Article1 hour ago
A tiled collection of logos for Zooniverse projects. Each logo consists of a square containing two concentric circles formed of thick lines plus a diagonal slash. The colors, textures, backgrounds (and sometimes foregrounds) of each logo are customized for each project. For example, a project about penguins features photographs of penguins in its logo.

NASA Partner Zooniverse Receives White House Open Science Award

2 min read

Congrats to NASA partner Zooniverse for being named winners in the White House’s Year of Open Science Recognition Challenge! The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) designated 2023 as the year of Open Science, and invited innovators to submit stories of how…

Article20 hours ago

X-ray Satellite XMM-Newton Sees ‘Space Clover’ in a New Light

5 min read

Astronomers have discovered enormous circular radio features of unknown origin around some galaxies. Now, new observations of one dubbed the Cloverleaf suggest it was created by clashing groups of galaxies. Studying these structures, collectively called ORCs (odd radio circles), in…

Article1 day ago
Hubble space telescope over Earth

NASA’s Hubble Pauses Science Due to Gyro Issue

2 min read

Updated April 30, 2024 Editor’s note: On April 30, 2024, NASA announced it restored the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope to science operations April 29. The spacecraft is in good health and once again operating using all three of its gyros. All of Hubble’s instruments…

Article3 days ago
Close-up view of Resolve’s detector

NASA/JAXA’s XRISM Mission Captures Unmatched Data With Just 36 Pixels

3 min read

At a time when phone cameras are capable of taking snapshots with millions of pixels, an instrument on the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) satellite captures revolutionary science with just 36 of them. “That may sound impossible, but…

Article3 days ago
Illustration showing a hazy blue planet against the black background of space. The planet is in the left side of the frame. The axis is tilted roughly 20 degrees counter-clockwise from vertical. The eastern side (right half) is lit by a star out of view and the western side (left half) is in shadow. The terminator (the boundary between the day and night sides) is fuzzy. There are white patchy clouds visible on the dayside, near the terminator, along the equator, that appear to be originating from the nightside.

NASA’s Webb Maps Weather on Planet 280 Light-Years Away

6 min read

An international team of researchers has successfully used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather on the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b. Precise brightness measurements over a broad spectrum of mid-infrared light, combined with 3D climate models and…

Article3 days ago
A clumpy dome of blueish-gray clouds rises about a third of the way from the bottom. Above it, streaky, translucent red wisps brush upward to about halfway up the image. The top half of the image is the black background of space with one prominent, bright white star with Webb’s 8-point diffraction spikes. Additional stars and galaxies are scattered throughout the image, although very few are seen through the thick clouds at bottom and all are significantly smaller than the largest star.

Webb Captures Top of Iconic Horsehead Nebula in Unprecedented Detail

4 min read

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of a zoomed-in portion of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show the top of the “horse’s mane” or…

Article4 days ago
A bright, white galactic core shines near the center of the image with a faint bar of stars extending from it, diagonally to the right. Faint, hazy spiral arms encircle the core, with several distant stars and bright blue foreground stars with diffraction spikes scattered throughout the image, all against black space.

Hubble Spots a Magnificent Barred Galaxy

1 min read

The magnificent central bar of NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271) shines bright in the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog), in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Roughly 65 million light-years from Earth, this barred spiral galaxy is a…

Article1 week ago
Artist concept of TESS spacecraft.

NASA’s Planet-Hunting Satellite Temporarily on Pause

3 min read

During a routine activity April 23, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) entered safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations. The satellite scans the sky searching for planets beyond our solar system. The team is working to restore the satellite to…

Article1 week ago
Image of the Fermi e-book cover

Explore the Universe with the First E-Book from NASA’s Fermi

4 min read

To commemorate a milestone anniversary for NASA’s Fermi spacecraft, the mission team has published an e-book called “Our High-Energy Universe: 15 Years with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.” Readers can download the e-book in PDF and EPUB formats. The e-book…

Article1 week ago