Webb Telescopes view face-on of spiral galaxy NGC 4254.

Webb launches on a cloudy day from an Arianne 5 rocket. The image shows the rocket just lifting off the pad with a plume of orange fire and a plume grey blue smoke extending well to the right against a slate blue sky.

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At center right is a compact star cluster composed of luminous red, blue, and white points of light. Faint jets with clumpy, diffuse material extend in various directions from the bright cluster. Above and to the right is a smaller cluster of stars. Translucent red wisps of material stretch across the scene, though there are patches and a noticeable gap in the top left corner that reveal the black background of space. Background galaxies are scattered across this swath of space, appearing as small blue-white and orange-white dots or fuzzy, thin disks. There are two noticeably larger points, foreground stars, with diffraction spikes: an orange-white point on the left, and a blue-white point in the top right.

NASA’s Webb Peers into the Extreme Outer Galaxy

5 min read

Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison,…

Article4 days ago

Amid a field of galaxies, a repeated, elongated red galaxy forms a shape like the top of a question mark, with another galaxy positioned like the question mark’s dot. In each occurrence, another white, clumpy galaxy with an overall circular shape appears perched on top of the red galaxy. A very bright foreground galaxy appears to the right of the bottom curve of the question mark shape. To the lower right, among other galaxies, another occurrence of the galaxy pair appears, unaffiliated with the question mark shape.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Distorted Galaxy Forming Cosmic Question Mark

5 min read

It’s 7 billion years ago, and the universe’s heyday of star formation is beginning to slow. What might our Milky Way galaxy have looked like at that time? Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found clues in the…

Article2 weeks ago

Hundreds of small galaxies against the black background of space. Several white spiral galaxies are near image center. Most of the galaxies are various shades of orange and red, and many are too tiny to discern a shape. A handful of foreground stars show Webb's six diffraction spikes.

Webb Finds Early Galaxies Weren’t Too Big for Their Britches After All

5 min read

It got called the crisis in cosmology. But now astronomers can explain some surprising recent discoveries. When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early universe from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic…

Article3 weeks ago

Side-by-side images of the Pillars of Creation from Hubble (left) and Webb (right). In the visible view from Hubble, the pillars appear thick, dusty, and brown with yellow streamers along their edges. The background of this Hubble image is like a sunrise, beginning in yellows at the bottom, before transitioning to light green and deeper blues at the top. In Webb's near-infrared view, the pillars appear brighter in orange and yellowish tones, with fainter blue streamers along the edges. The background in Webb’s image appears in blue hues with a many more stars than can be seen in visible light.

AstroViz: Iconic Pillars of Creation Star in NASA’s New 3D Visualization

4 min read

NASA’s Universe of Learning – a partnership among the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Caltech/IPAC, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and part of the NASA Science Activation program portfolio – recently released…

Article1 month ago

How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Illuminate Cosmic Dawn

6 min read

Today, enormous stretches of space are crystal clear, but that wasn’t always the case. During its infancy, the universe was filled with a “fog” that made it opaque, cloaking the first stars and galaxies. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space…

Article2 months ago

This image shows the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab. The image is mostly black, with blue scale-like features apparent in the central region of the image. At the center of the image, there is a black circle, and in the center, a symbol representing a star. This black circle blocks the light from the host star. To the lower left of the circle is a fuzzy bright orange circle, which is the exoplanet.

NASA’s Webb Images Cold Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away

6 min read

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date. The planet is several times…

Article2 months ago

Illustration of a planet, zoomed in on the planet’s dayside/nightside boundary. The planet encompasses takes up the full image. At the bottom left, the image is dark, depicting the nightside covering the planet in a dark shadow. In the right side of the image, the planet has a fuzzy orange-pink atmosphere with hints of latitudinal wispy cloud bands. The right upper corner is bright, where the star (not illustrated) shines.

NASA’s Webb Investigates Eternal Sunrises, Sunsets on Distant World

6 min read

Near-infrared spectral analysis of terminator confirms differences in morning and evening atmosphere Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39…

Article2 months ago

Arp 142, two interacting galaxies, observed in near- and mid-infrared light. At left is NGC 2937, nicknamed the Egg. Its center is the brighter and whiter. There are six diffraction spikes atop its gauzy blue layers. At right is NGC 2936, nicknamed the Penguin. Its beak-like region points toward and above the Egg. Where the eye would be is a small, opaque yellow spiral. The Penguin’s distorted arms form the bird’s beak, back, and tail. The tail is wide and layered, like a beta fish’s tail. A semi-transparent blue hue traces the Penguin and extends from the galaxy, creating an upside-down U over top of both galaxies. At top right is another galaxy seen from the side, pointing roughly at a 45-degree angle. It is largely light blue. Its length appears approximately as long as the Egg’s height. One foreground star with large, bright blue diffraction spikes appears over top of the galaxy and another near it. The entire black background is filled with tiny, extremely distant galaxies.

Vivid Portrait of Interacting Galaxies Marks Webb’s Second Anniversary

6 min read

Two for two! A duo of interacting galaxies commemorates the second science anniversary of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which takes constant observations, including images and highly detailed data known as spectra. Its operations have led to a “parade” of…

Article2 months ago

Dr. Begoña Vila, Instrument Systems Engineer, James Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s Begoña Vila Awarded 2024 Galician Excellence Award

3 min read

Begoña Vila, an instrument systems engineer from KBR who worked on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, has been selected to receive the 2024 Galician Excellence Title in the Sciences and Medicine Category for her career and work on Webb. This award…

Article2 months ago

A growing protostar embedded within a molecular cloud. The center of the image shows a bright, red region, where the growing protostar resides, with a thin, gray lane of matter cutting through it horizontally, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above and below this region are blue triangular-shaped molecular clouds, which give the overall object an hourglass shape. The areas in the molecular clouds closest to the protostar have more pronounced plumes of blue gas. There are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered across the background.

NASA’s Webb Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Forming Star

4 min read

The colors within this mid-infrared image reveal details about the central protostar’s behavior. The cosmos seems to come alive with a crackling explosion of pyrotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared…

Article3 months ago

Bente Eegholm: Ensuring Space Telescopes Have Stellar Vision

7 min read

Bente Eegholm is an optical engineer working to ensure missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have stellar vision. When it launches by May 2027, the Roman mission will shed light on many astrophysics topics, like dark energy, which…

Article3 months ago

Mosaic of the Pillars of Creation visualization model, composed of 4 rectangular strips oriented 45 degrees clockwise from vertical. Strips alternate between Hubble and Webb views of the visualization model, with each strip labeled: “Hubble” at lower right corners of first and third strips; “Webb” at upper left corners of the second and fourth strips. Webb strips have drop shadows that make it look like they are overlaid on top of larger Hubble image. Mosaic shows 3 vertical structures (pillars) of thick smoke-like material. Pillar edges are glowing, with thin wisps of material moving away into space. In Hubble strips, pillars are dark brown and opaque, on greenish blue background. In Webb strips, pillars are bright orange to brown with a distinct area of bright red at the top of middle pillar. A red star appears at the tip of a peak in the left pillar and the background is deep blue.

Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualization from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes

6 min read

Made famous in 1995 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Pillars of Creation in the heart of the Eagle Nebula have captured imaginations worldwide with their arresting, ethereal beauty. Now, NASA has released a new 3D visualization of these towering…

Article3 months ago

NASA Webb, Hubble Scientist Marcia Rieke Awarded Gruber Cosmology Prize

3 min read

Marcia Rieke, a scientist who worked on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, has received the Gruber Foundation’s 2024 Cosmology Prize. Rieke will receive the award and gold laureate pin at a ceremony August 8, 2024, at…

Article3 months ago

A rectangular image with black vertical rectangles at the bottle left and top right to indicate missing data. A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The center of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the center, there is one particularly bright star, that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the center. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field, brightest sources in the field have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of the Webb Telescope.

First of Its Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image

6 min read

Alignment of bipolar jets confirms star formation theories For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to directly image has been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In this stunning image of the Serpens…

Article3 months ago

The Crab Nebula. An oval with complex structure extends from lower left to upper right against a black background. On the oval’s exterior lie curtains of glowing yellow and green fluffy material. Its interior shell shows large-scale loops of mottled filaments of yellow-white and green, studded with clumps and knots. Translucent thin ribbons of smoky blue lie within the remnant’s interior, brightest toward its center. The blue material follows different directions throughout, including sometimes sharply curving away from certain regions within the remnant. A faint, wispy ring of blue material encircles the very center of the nebula. Around and within the supernova remnant are many points of blue, green, purple, and white light.

Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb

6 min read

New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion. A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With…

Article3 months ago

NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins

5 min read

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory through launch, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument also revealed jets of gas flowing into space from the twin stars. Scientists recently got a big surprise from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when they turned the observatory…

Article3 months ago

Webb Space telescope deep field image showing hundreds of objects of different colors, shapes, and sizes scattered across the black background of space.

NASA’s Webb Opens New Window on Supernova Science

6 min read

Peering deeply into the cosmos, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving scientists their first detailed glimpse of supernovae from a time when our universe was just a small fraction of its current age. A team using Webb data has…

Article3 months ago

A yellowish star is at the center of the image. It is surrounded by a mottled disk of gas and dust that transitions from bright yellow to darker orange as you move outward. The disk stretches from about 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock and is tilted so that the nearer side is toward the viewer.

Webb Finds Plethora of Carbon Molecules Around Young Star

5 min read

An international team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study the disk of gas and dust around a young, very low-mass star. The results reveal the largest number of carbon-containing molecules seen to date in such…

Article3 months ago

This illustration is awash in bright blues, with only areas of the black background of space peeking out near the edges. Just above center is a large white spiral galaxy that is forming within a large cloud of blue gas. Its spiral arms twirl clockwise. Immediately around the galaxy’s edges are larger light blue dots. The gas appears thicker and brighter blue below the galaxy and toward the bottom left in what looks like a loose, extended column. Other wispy blue gas appears all around the galaxy, extending to every edge of the illustration. There are two additional spiral galaxies, though they are about half the size of the one at the center. They appear toward the top left and bottom right, and both are connected to regions of blue gas. Several bright knots dot the brightest blue areas near the center, and toward the top right. The background is clearer and more obviously black along a wider area at the left edge, a sliver along the top right, and in triangles toward the bottom right corner.

Galaxies Actively Forming in Early Universe Caught Feeding on Cold Gas

5 min read

Researchers analyzing data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed three galaxies that may be actively forming when the universe was only 400 to 600 million years old. Webb’s data shows these galaxies are surrounded by gas that the…

Article4 months ago

Space scene of a thin atmosphere version of Gliese 12 b

NASA’s TESS Finds Intriguing World Sized Between Earth, Venus

5 min read

Using observations by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and many other facilities, two international teams of astronomers have discovered a planet between the sizes of Earth and Venus only 40 light-years away. Multiple factors make it a candidate well-suited…

Article4 months ago

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Red dual opposing jets coming from young stars fill the darker top half of the image, while a glowing pale-yellow, cave-like structure is bottom center, tilted toward two o’clock, with a bright star at its center. See extended description for more.

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This visualization of a gravity model shows variations in Earth's gravity field. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Texas Center for Space Research

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