Gravitational Waves

News & Articles

This artist’s concept shows the BurstCube satellite in orbit against a background of stars.

NASA’s Tiny BurstCube Mission Launches to Study Cosmic Blasts

4 min read

Editor’s note, April 18, 2024: BurstCube deployed into orbit from the space station April 18, 2024. It will begin a…

Article1 month ago

NASA Collaborating on European-led Gravitational Wave Observatory in Space

4 min read

The first space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves has passed a major review and will proceed to the construction…

Article3 months ago

How NASA Chases and Investigates Bright Cosmic Blips

9 min read

Stephen Lesage’s phone started vibrating just after halftime on Oct. 9, 2022, while he was watching a soccer game in…

Article3 months ago
At the beginning of this animated GIF, we see the glowing gas surrounding two black holes. The gas is shaded orange and purple, and it is tightly wound around each individual black hole. They each have a tail of gas, looking like a comma. As the animation proceeds, the camera moves to see the two black holes nearly in line with each other and then back to see the bottom of the system. As the view tilts, the gravitational effects of the black holes at the center cause the light to bend like a funhouse mirror.

A Mesmerizing Model of Monster Black Holes

2 min read

Just about every galaxy the size of our Milky Way (or bigger) has a supermassive black hole at its center.…

Article12 months ago
This animated gif of supercomputer data takes you to the inner zone of the accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. Purple and blue-colored swirls spin in toward a central black circle.

Black Holes: Seeing the Invisible!

4 min read

Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of…

Article3 years ago
Small specs of white and tan drift by, and a large, irregular shape floats into the image from the left, traveling to the right and down until it disappears off the bottom of the frame.

Be Glad You Don’t Have to Dust in Space!

4 min read

Come springtime you might be ready to throw open the windows and break out the feather duster, because that’s a…

Article5 years ago
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