Citizen Science Highlights

NASA needs your help! You can collaborate with professional scientists, conduct cutting-edge science, and make real discoveries. A science degree is not required, just a passion for understanding the natural world. Here, you can read news about NASA-funded citizen science projects, new discoveries, and opportunities to get involved. For more information on current citizen science projects.

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A group photo of attendees standing in a courtyard with tall trees and plants in the background. The group consists of diverse individuals dressed in casual and professional attire, posing in front of a stone building with large windows. The setting includes greenery, floral arrangements, and a paved floor, suggesting a formal event or conference.

Science Done by Volunteers Highlighted at December’s American Geophysical Union Meeting

2 min read

More than 30,000 scientists gathered in Washington, D.C. during the second week of December – many to show off the work of NASA’s science volunteers! The American Geophysical Union held its annual meeting of professionals this month – the world’s…

Article3 days ago

2024: NASA Armstrong Prepares for Future Innovative Research Efforts

4 min read

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is preparing today for tomorrow’s mission. Supersonic flight, next generation aircraft, advanced air mobility, climate changes, human exploration of space, and the next innovation are just some of the topics our researchers,…

Article6 days ago
An oval-shaped spiral galaxy. Its core is a compact, glowing blue spot. A bright bar of light, lined with dark reddish dust, extends horizontally to the edge of the disk. A spiral arm emerges from each end of the bar and follows the edge of the disk, lined with blue and red glowing patches of stars, to the opposite end and a little off the galaxy. A scattering of blue stars are between us and the galaxy.

Hubble Spies a Cosmic Eye

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each…

Article6 days ago

NASA Finds ‘Sideways’ Black Hole Using Legacy Data, New Techniques

4 min read

Lee esta historia en español aquí. NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be “tipped over,” rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it. That galaxy, called NGC 5084, has been…

Article1 week ago
Set of eight different vortices, spinning storms, found by Jovian Vortex Hunters with instrument from NASA’s Juno mission

Jovian Vortex Hunters Spun Up Over New Paper

2 min read

Jumping Jupiter! The results are in, storm chasers! Thanks to your help over the last two years the Jovian Vortex Hunter project has published a catalog of 7222 vortices, which you can download here. Each vortex is an enormous swirling…

Article1 week ago
Person in white clean-room coverall, blue gloves, and face mask seated at a workbench using tweezers to place an electrical component into a gold and black assembly.

Very Cold Detectors Reveal the Very Hot Universe and Kick Off a New Era in X-ray Astronomy

7 min read

X-rays are radiated by matter hotter than one million Kelvin, and high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy can tell us about the composition of the matter and how fast and in what direction it is moving. Quantum calorimeters are opening this new window…

Article1 week ago
The center of the image contains arcs of orange and pink that form a boat-like shape. One end of these arcs points to the top right of the image, while the other end point toward the bottom left. Another plume of orange and pink expands from the center to the top left of the image. To the right of this plume is a large cluster of white stars. There are various other white stars and a few galaxies of different sizes spread throughout the image. Ten, small, yellow circles overlaid at various points across the image indicate the positions of the ten stars surveyed in this study.

NASA’s Webb Finds Planet-Forming Disks Lived Longer in Early Universe

7 min read

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just solved a conundrum by proving a controversial finding made with the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope more than 20 years ago. In 2003, Hubble provided evidence of a massive planet around a very old star,…

Article1 week ago
A close-up of a spiral galaxy, seen face-on. Its center is a bright white point, surrounded by a large yellowish oval with thin lines of dust swirling in it. From the sides of the oval emerge two bright spiral arms which wind through the round disk of the galaxy, filled with shining pink spots where stars are forming and more dark reddish dust. Many stars are visible in the foreground, over and around the galaxy.

Hubble Images a Grand Spiral

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the glorious spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus, the Wolf. NGC 5643 is a grand design spiral, which refers to the galaxy’s symmetrical…

Article2 weeks ago

NASA Successfully Integrates Roman Mission’s Telescope, Instruments

4 min read

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully integrated the mission’s telescope and two instruments onto the instrument carrier, marking the completion of the Roman payload. Now the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will…

Article2 weeks ago
Hundreds of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this field. Galaxies’ colors vary. The majority appear orange, pink, and white, some are shades of orange or blue. Most galaxies appear as fuzzy ovals, but a few have distinctive spiral arms. At the very center is a tiny galaxy nicknamed Firefly Sparkle that looks like a long, angled, dotted line. Smaller companions are nearby.

Found: First Actively Forming Galaxy as Lightweight as Young Milky Way

6 min read

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around 600 million years after the big bang, but is also similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have…

Article2 weeks ago
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James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

Perseverance Rover

Parker Solar Probe

Juno