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.

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NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe "Snowstorm" of Debris Around Vega

In 2005, NASA’s Spitzer mapped a ring of dust around Vega, one of the brightest stars in the northern sky. Now, using Hubble and Webb, scientists find the disk is smoother than expected and exoplanets are conspicuously absent.

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A Hubble Space Telescope image of the star Vega's dust disk. The disk is perfectly circular, and at the center is a black spot blocking out the bright glow of a star. Closer to the center, the disk is white. Radial striations extend out from the center, giving a ripple effect to the disk like the end of a sausage casing. The outer edge of the circular disk is blue.
A Hubble Space Telescope false-color view of a 100-billion-mile-wide disk of dust around the summer star Vega. Hubble detects reflected light from dust that is the size of smoke particles largely in a halo on the periphery of the disk.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)

Blue Snowball Nebula

Caldwell 22, also cataloged as NGC 7662 and nicknamed the Snowball Nebula or Blue Snowball Nebula, is a planetary nebula located about 2,500 light-years from Earth.

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Light blue dust and gas forms an egg shaped shell surrounding a bright white star in the center. There is an outer shell as well, also light blue, with some pink on the edges.

Featured Tidings

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Hubble Catches Cosmic Snowflakes

Globular cluster ngc 6441
Article
5 min read

Space Snow Visible in Bright Baby Solar System

A bright star is surrounded by an inner circle of dust and a glowing snowy outer circle.
6 min read

Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry

Article2 years ago
Hubble serves up a holiday snow angel
1 min read

Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel

Article13 years ago
globular cluster M13
3 min read

A Celestial Snow Globe of Stars

Article16 years ago
Featured Video

Cozy up to the Fermi fireplace

Although it looks a little like a crackling fire, this is actually a 14-year time-lapse of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s observations.

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Cosmic Winter Wonderland

Although there are no seasons in space, this cosmic vista invokes thoughts of a frosty winter landscape. It is, in fact, a region called NGC 6357 where radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the cooler gas in the cloud that surrounds them.

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A vibrant nebula in space with swirling clouds of blue, pink, and orange gases, dotted with bright stars against a dark backdrop.

Universe News

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Article
4 min read

NASA’s Hubble Takes the Closest-Ever Look at a Quasar

A Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) coronagraph image of quasar 3C 273. It looks the same as the WFPC2 image, but in shades of blue. A black circle (labeled “core light blocked”) blocks the glare of the quasar. Blue-colored filamentary material is visible near the black hole. The extragalactic jet is still visible.
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.
Illustration of the Cygnus X-3 system
4 min read

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

Article2 weeks ago
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

Article2 weeks 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

Article2 weeks ago
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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