Fifty years ago, on June 1, 1973, astronomers around the world were introduced to a powerful and perplexing new phenomenon called gamma-ray bursts, now seen somewhere in the sky about once a day on average. Astronomers think the bursts arise from catastrophic occurrences involving stars in distant... Read More
A water vapor plume from Saturn’s moon Enceladus spanning more than 6,000 miles – nearly the distance from Los Angeles, California to Buenos Aires, Argentina – has been detected by researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Universe, Citizen Science
As the universe expands, it stretches out the waves of light coming from distant galaxies. Now you can measure this stretching, or “redshift” and use it to look back in time. The new Redshift Wrangler citizen science project, hosted by Zoonverse, asks you to help astronomers peer across billions of... Read More
The jellyfish galaxy JW39 hangs serenely in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Four composite images deliver dazzling views from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope of two galaxies, a nebula, and a star cluster. Each image combines Chandra's X-rays — a form of high-energy light — with infrared data from previously released Webb images,... Read More
Astronomers using Hubble have come up with what they say is some of their best evidence yet for the presence of a rare class of "intermediate-sized" black hole that may be lurking in the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth.
Scientists used ground-based telescopes to get unprecedented views, thanks to the giant planet’s position in its long orbit around the Sun.
NASA has selected a new mission to help humanity better understand Earth’s dynamic atmosphere – specifically, ice clouds that form at high altitudes throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions. The PolSIR instrument – short for Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer – will study such ice... Read More
The densely packed globular cluster NGC 6325 glistens in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
To help learners of all ages understand how to safely observe the Oct. 14, 2023, annular solar eclipse and the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, NASA has released a new set of resources for educators.
Astronomers have discovered an Earth-size exoplanet, or world beyond our solar system, that may be carpeted with volcanoes.
This just in: NASA’s new Daily Minor Planet project seeks your help discovering and tracking asteroids—in a dazzling new data set. Remember asteroids, those lumps of rock tumbling through space left over from the formation of our solar system? There are so many reasons to find these objects. Some... Read More
The gas giant orbiter has flown over 510 million miles and also documented close encounters with three of Jupiter’s four largest moons.
Researchers found that emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas dropped for several years near the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.
