Explore:
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.
Galaxies
Collections of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust bound together by gravity.
Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells ‘Spiraling’ Apep
Two dying stars are locked in an epic 190-year orbit and spewing perfectly coiled shells of dust into space. NASA’s Webb revealed four of these spirals for the first time, but with a plot twist — a third massive star is carving a knife-like hole into each expanding dust cloud. These Wolf-Rayet stars are among the rarest in our galaxy, destined to explode as supernovae. Understanding how these stellar giants shed carbon-rich material helps us trace where the building blocks of planets ultimately originate.
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Astro-Investigates: What is the big bang?
What is (or was) the big bang? Learn this and more with Astro-Investigates, the video series that explores and explains big astrophysics topics with the help of NASA scientists.
Learn MoreThe Pleiades Star Cluster
These young hot blue stars are members of the Pleiades open star cluster and reside about 430 light-years away in the northern constellation Taurus. The brightest stars are visible to the unaided eye during evenings from October to April. A new study finds the cluster is three times the size previously thought.
By studying clusters of stars born from the same gas cloud at the same time, astronomers can test theories about stellar development, including how stars form, age, and evolve.
2025 Astronomy Round-Up
NASA, JAXA XRISM Satellite X-rays Milky Way’s Sulfur
NASA’s NICER Maps Debris From Recurring Cosmic Crashes
The Universe’s Brightest Lights Have Some Dark Origins
NASA’s IXPE Obtains First X-ray Polarization Measurement of Magnetar Outburst
Dark Matter Revealed in Cosmic Collision
Two massive clusters smashed into each other billions of years ago at speeds so extreme that their hot gas was ripped away, but their dark matter stayed put. The findings confirm that dark matter doesn’t interact with itself as it collides.
Dark matter makes up 27% of the universe, and understanding its behavior helps explain why galaxies, stars, and planets can exist at all.
