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Worlds beyond our solar system.

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

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

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

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NASA IXPE’s ‘Heartbeat’ Measurements Challenge Current Theories

Black holes don’t have hearts, but they can have a heartbeat. When matter gets pulled toward a black hole it forms an accretion disk. The hottest part of the disk can create a repeating X-ray signal as the matter piles up and then plunges into the black hole. But when scientists gave this black hole a checkup, the results didn’t match expectations, challenging current theories. Learning more about how black holes behave helps us better understand how galaxies, stars, planets, and even elements came to be,

This artist’s concept shows the pulsing behavior of the black hole in system IGR J17091-3624 at its real-time speed of 5 seconds per cycle.

NASA/Walt Feimer (HSTI), Tyler Chase (UMBC), Scott Wiessinger (GSFC)

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Mid Infrared

Colorful, mostly red glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape that is illuminated from within by a bright central star. The asymmetrical shape resembles a large squished bug on the ground. In the center, a light blue glow appears over areas of dark pockets that look dark blue and are traced with orange material. It has a clumpy appearance. Shells of gas and dust appear as lobes stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. The shells become a deeper red with distance from the center. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock. The background of space is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 in the near-infrared shows a complex scene of multiple outflows expanding out at different angles from a dying star at the center of the scene. In this image, the red areas represent cool molecular gas, for exa

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Colorful, mostly blue image of mid-infrared light from a glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape. A star at the center of the image is a small point of pinkish-white light. The asymmetrical shape of the expanding cloud of gas and dust resembles paint splattered on the ground. The filaments of the expanding shells are wispy, and mostly white and blue. The shells appear as lobes stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock. A perfect circle of whitish blue dust traces the outer edges of the shells. The background of the image is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.

The mid-infrared view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows expanding circular shells around the outflows from the dying central star, which astronomers suspect is the pinkish white dot at the center of the image.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Colorful, mostly red glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape that is illuminated from within by a bright central star. The asymmetrical shape resembles a large squished bug on the ground. In the center, a light blue glow appears over areas of dark pockets that look dark blue and are traced with orange material. It has a clumpy appearance. Shells of gas and dust appear as lobes stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. The shells become a deeper red with distance from the center. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock. The background of space is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 in the near-infrared shows a complex scene of multiple outflows expanding out at different angles from a dying star at the center of the scene. In this image, the red areas represent cool molecular gas, for exa

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Colorful, mostly blue image of mid-infrared light from a glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape. A star at the center of the image is a small point of pinkish-white light. The asymmetrical shape of the expanding cloud of gas and dust resembles paint splattered on the ground. The filaments of the expanding shells are wispy, and mostly white and blue. The shells appear as lobes stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock. A perfect circle of whitish blue dust traces the outer edges of the shells. The background of the image is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.

The mid-infrared view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows expanding circular shells around the outflows from the dying central star, which astronomers suspect is the pinkish white dot at the center of the image.

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Near Infrared

Mid Infrared

NASA's Webb Unravels Nebula Mystery

Expanding gas shells called planetary nebulae can take on unusual shapes, sculpted by the stars at their centers. In these images of NGC 6072 captured by NASA’s Webb telescope, astronomers see hints of two central stars whose interaction created the nebula’s striking, spiky form. Because most stars in our galaxy belong to binary systems, studying nebulae like this helps us understand how stellar pairs evolve and how they enrich the galaxy with the elements needed to form new stars and planets. Move the slider to compare Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI views of this cosmic cloud.

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Mapping Stellar ‘Polka Dots’

A new model called StarryStarryProcess helps scientists analyze stars and map their star spots, like the sunspots we see on our Sun. Star spots can make it harder to accurately detect and study the atmospheres of orbiting planets.

With a more accurate star spot map, scientists can help future missions disentangle signals from stars and planets and sharpen the search for habitable worlds.

Featured News

NASA Explores Industry Possibilities to Raise Swift Mission’s Orbit

NASA’s Chandra Reveals Star’s Inner Conflict Before Explosion

NASA’s Webb Finds New Evidence for Planet Around Closest Solar Twin

NASA Roman Core Survey Will Trace Cosmic Expansion Over Time

X-ray and Radio go ‘Hand in Hand’ in New Image

Hubble Surveys Supernova-Rich Spiral

NGC 1309 is about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus, but has caught NASA’s Hubble telescope attention several times. The spiral galaxy is host to two perfect examples of Type Ia supernovae which happen in two-star systems when one of the stars is a white dwarf.

These types of blasts are like cosmic mile markers that help scientists measure the universe’s expansion and explore mysteries like dark energy.

A top-down view of a spiral galaxy, showing its brightly-shining center, its broad spiral arms, and the faint halo around its disk, as well as distant galaxies and stars on a dark background. Large blue clouds of gas speckled with small stars and strands of dark dust swirl around the galaxy’s disk. A couple of the background galaxies are large enough that their own swirling spiral arms are visible.

Universe News

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NASA Webb Looks at Earth-Sized, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e

Hubble Spies Galaxy with Lots to See

Glittering Glimpse of Star Birth From NASA’s Webb Telescope

Advancing Single-Photon Sensing Image Sensors to Enable the Search for Life Beyond…

Webb’s Exoplanet Research Sounds Like Sci-Fi—But It’s Real

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