Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes

News & Articles

How NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Measure Ages of Stars

6 min read

Guessing your age might be a popular carnival game, but for astronomers it’s a real challenge to determine the ages…

Article3 weeks ago
Left: Messier 82 as imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hour-glass-shaped red plumes of gas are shooting outward from above and below a bright blue, disk-shaped center of a galaxy. This galaxy is surrounded by many white stars and set against the black background of space. A small square highlights the section that the image on the right shows in greater detail. White text at bottom reads "Hubble." Right: A section of Messier 82 as imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. An edge-on spiral starburst galaxy with a bright white, glowing core set against the black background of space. A white band of the edge-on disk extends from lower left to upper right. Dark brown tendrils of dust are scattered thinly along this band. Many white points in various sizes – stars or star clusters – are scattered throughout the image, but are most heavily concentrated toward the center. Many clumpy, red filaments extend vertically above and below the galaxy’s plane. White text at bottom reads "Webb."

NASA’s Webb Probes an Extreme Starburst Galaxy

6 min read

Amid a site teeming with new and young stars lies an intricate substructure. A team of astronomers has used NASA’s…

Article3 weeks ago

Black Holes

2 min read

Black Holes Black holes are among the most mysterious cosmic objects, much studied but not fully understood. These objects aren’t…

Topic

NASA’s Roman Team Selects Survey to Map Our Galaxy’s Far Side

7 min read

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has announced plans for an unprecedented survey of the plane of our Milky…

Article2 months ago
At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is an opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula, including two tiny cavities at the top center of the image. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside the nebula, most of them are yellow or white. At 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with 8 diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disk-shaped galaxies scattered across the image.

Peering Into the Tendrils of NGC 604 with NASA’s Webb

4 min read

The formation of stars and the chaotic environments they inhabit is one of the most well-studied, but also mystery-shrouded, areas…

Article2 months ago

NASA Telescopes Find New Clues About Mysterious Deep Space Signals

7 min read

Using two of the agency’s X-ray telescopes, researchers were able to zoom in on a dead star’s erratic behavior as…

Article2 months ago
Keep exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

National Historic Preservation Month

Correction and Clarification of C.26 Rapid Mission Design Studies for Mars Sample Return

A platform spacecraft surrounded by round fuel tanks and circular solar panels sits on Mars. A rover is approaching in the background.

MCMC Circulation Systems

MCMC General Circulation