Welcome to the Universe

Discover the universe: Learn about the history of the cosmos, what it's made of, and so much more.

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Exoplanets

Worlds beyond our solar system.

Stars

Giant balls of hot gas that burn for millions to billions of years. 

Black Holes

Concentrations of matter with gravity so powerful not even light can escape.

Looking like a pinwheel, this face-on spiral galaxy holds a bright-white core at image center. Arms curve outward from the core. They hold dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions. All on a black background dotted with stars.

Galaxies

Collections of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust bound together by gravity.

featured story

NASA’s IXPE Helps Researchers Determine Shape of Black Hole Corona

Scientists have long speculated about the geometry of a black hole’s corona, a region created by strong magnetic fields threading through the accretion disk. Now observations from IXPE help shed light on these obscure environments.

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An illustration of a black hole with a dark circle surrounded by light discs.
This illustration of material swirling around a black hole highlights a particular feature, called the “corona,” that shines brightly in X-ray light. In this depiction, the corona can be seen as a purple haze floating above the underlying accretion disk, and extending slightly inside of its inner edge.
NASA/Caltech-IPAC/Robert Hurt
Featured Video

Snippet of Euclid Mission’s Cosmic Atlas Released by ESA

ESA (the European Space Agency) has released a new, 208-gigapixel mosaic of images taken by Euclid, a mission with NASA contributions that launched in 2023 to study why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

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Featured News

More NASA News
Article
2 min read

NASA Reveals Prototype Telescope for Gravitational Wave Observatory

A technician inspects a prototype LISA telescope.
Article
6 min read

NASA’s TESS Spots Record-Breaking Stellar Triplets

6 min read

NASA Successfully Integrates Coronagraph for Roman Space Telescope

Article1 month ago
5 min read

Planets Beware: NASA Unburies Danger Zones of Star Cluster

Image Article
4 min read

NASA Establishes New Class of Astrophysics Missions, Selects Studies

News Release

NASA's Hubble Sees a Stellar Volcano

Located 700 light-years away, a binary star system called R Aquarii redistributes products of nuclear energy in violent eruptions of glowing gas.

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A bright binary star surrounded by a colorful loops of nebula on the black background of space. One loop is vertical the other is horizontal across the center of the image.

Universe News

Explore All Universe News
Article
2 min read

This Thanksgiving, We’re Grateful for NASA’s Volunteer Scientists!

A group of smiling people in cold-weather gear and life jackets pose on a boat surrounded by icy waters. They are holding scientific equipment, including a plankton net and collection bottles, with yellow bins and an orange traffic cone visible in the foreground.
Article
4 min read

NASA, JAXA XRISM Mission Looks Deeply Into ‘Hidden’ Stellar System

Illustration of the Cygnus X-3 system
Image of a galaxy on the black background of space. The galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the center. There is an inner disk that is clearer, with speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. There are different colored dots, distant galaxies, speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.
5 min read

Hats Off to NASA’s Webb: Sombrero Galaxy Dazzles in New Image

Article1 week ago
A spiral galaxy seen directly from the side, such that its disk looks like a narrow diagonal band across the image. A band of dark dust covers the disk in the center most of the way out to the ends, and the disk glows around that. In the center of the galaxy, a whitish circle of light bulges out above and below the disk. Each end of the disk curves slightly. The background is black and mostly empty.
2 min read

Hubble Captures an Edge-On Spiral with Curve Appeal

Article1 week ago
Artist's concept of early stages of the young star FU Orionis outburst. The star, a bright yellow sphere near the center, and its fluffy disk of gas and dust are slightly tilted, extending from the top left corner to the bottom right. The swirling disk is bright yellow close to the star and gradually transitions to dark orange moving toward the edges of the frame. The top left and right corners reveal a black, starless background.
5 min read

NASA’s Hubble Finds Sizzling Details About Young Star FU Orionis

Article2 weeks ago
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Discover More Topics From NASA

Galaxies

Looking like a pinwheel, this face-on spiral galaxy holds a bright-white core at image center. Arms curve outward from the core. They hold dark dust lanes and bright star-forming regions. All on a black background dotted with stars.

Black Holes

Stars

Exoplanets