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Explanation: Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82, red glowing gas and dust are being cast out from the center. Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. In the featured images, a Hubble Space Telescope image in visible light is shown...

Days before one of the researchers’ wedding, a star explodes in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.A team of Israeli scientists managed to capture and study a once-in-a-lifetime supernova using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, helping mankind better understand this magnificent event. Supernovas, or exploding stars, are phenomenons that occur in our galaxy about once every century, with the last observable explosion taking place hundreds of years ago. Supernovas can’t be predicted, and instead astrophysicists study their aftermath in a way reminiscent of space archaeology. But the researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science learned about the supernova as it was taking place on...

Explanation: Is this galaxy jumping through a giant ring of stars? Probably not. Although the precise dynamics behind the featured image is yet unclear, what is clear is that the pictured galaxy, NGC 7714, has been stretched and distorted by a recent collision with a neighboring galaxy. This smaller neighbor, NGC 7715, situated off to the left of the frame, is thought to have charged right through NGC 7714. Observations indicate that the golden ring pictured is composed of millions of older Sun-like stars that are likely co-moving with the interior bluer stars. In contrast, the bright center of NGC...

Explanation: What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way galaxy. Also cataloged as M102, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen in this...

Combination of a Hubble Space Telescope image of SN 1987A and the compact argon source. The faint blue source in the centre is the emission from the compact source detected with the JWST/NIRSpec instrument. Outside this is the stellar debris, containing most of the mass, expanding at thousands of km/second. The inner bright "string of pearls" is the gas from the outer layers of the star that was expelled about 20,000 years before the final explosion. The is the fast debris are now colliding with the ring, explaining the bright spots. Outside of the inner ring are two outer rings,...

The search for exomoons orbiting planets outside our solar system has sparked a significant debate within the astronomical community, involving a pair of contrasting studies that presented divergent viewpoints on the existence of exomoons Kepler-1625b-i and Kepler-1708b-i. Much like Schrödinger’s oddball cat that is both dead and alive inside a box, we won’t really know until someone goes and looks. But in a new paper recently uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, a team of astronomers led by David Kipping from Columbia University takes issue with the drama surrounding the ongoing exomoon search. A DISCOVERY GETS DASHED In 2017, Kipping,...

Image of Uranus from Webb It seems crazy that Uranus was discovered in 1781 yet here we are, in 2024 and we have only sent one spacecraft to explore Uranus. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have given us close-up images of Uranus (and Neptune) but since their visit in 1986, we have not returned. There have of course been great images from the Hubble Space Telescope and from the James Webb Space Telescope but we still have lots to learn about them. The discovery of Uranus was accidental! British astronomer William Herschel was surveying stars that were too...

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 5033, located about 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). The galaxy is similar in size to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, at just over 100,000 light-years across. (Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At the center of this image is a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun that is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. (NASA, ESA, and STScI)...

NASA has announced that its 30-year-old iconic space telescope has stopped working and paused all scientific operations following a gyro error. The space agency explained via its blogpost that the Hubble Space Telescope entered safe mode on November 23 due to an "ongoing gyroscope (gyro) issue", and that the space telescope's instruments remain in good health. NASA further explained that Hubble entered into safe mode automatically when one of its three gyroscopes provided faulty readings. For those that don't know, Hubble's gyro's measure the turn rates of telescope, which is a component of the telescope knowing which direction it's pointing...

Explanation: This dance is to the death. As these two large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over 75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. As further evidence, the face-on spiral galaxy on the right, also known as NGC 3808A, exhibits many young blue star clusters produced in a burst of star formation. The twisted edge-on spiral on the left (NGC 3808B) seems to be wrapped in the material bridging...

On Dec. 22, the space agency issued a Request for Information regarding a non-exclusive SpaceX study earlier this year that suggested how the Hubble Space Telescope could be "reboosted" into a higher orbit. Since the start of Hubble's operations in 1990, the orbit of the space telescope 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth has been decaying. Reboosting it to an orbit that is both higher and more stable could add years to Hubble’s operating lifetime delaying the point at which NASA must deorbit or dispose of the telescope. During its five space shuttle missions to the service Hubble, NASA used...

Star Spaghettification Black Hole - This animation depicts a star experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event’. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser Scientists hope to improve their understanding of the growth of supermassive black holes in massive galaxies by studying intermediate-mass black holes. After lurking undetected in a dwarf galaxy, an intermediate-mass black hole revealed itself to astronomers when it gobbled up an unlucky star that strayed too close. Known as a “tidal disruption event” or TDE, the violent shredding of the star produced a flare of radiation that briefly outshone the combined stellar...

Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured these star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the Pillars of Creation. This James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam image expands Hubble's exploration of that region in greater detail and depth inside the iconic stellar nursery. Particularly stunning in Webb's near infrared view is the telltale reddish emission from knots of material undergoing gravitational collapse to form stars within the natal clouds. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant. The larger bright emission nebula is itself an easy target for...

Hubble has been orbiting the Earth since 1990 - NASA The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 with an expected lifespan of around 15 years, but servicing missions and upgrades have seen it continue to gather important science observations to this day. NASA is now exploring how it can remain operational even further into the future with the help of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which might be used to dock with the telescope and shift it to a more stable orbit. Hubble currently orbits the Earth at an altitude of around 335 miles (540 km), though this is decreasing slowly...

snr0519 While astronomers have seen the debris from scores of exploded stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, it is often difficult to determine the timeline of the star’s demise. By studying the spectacular remains of a supernova in a neighboring galaxy using NASA telescopes, a team of astronomers has found enough clues to help wind back the clock. The supernova remnant called SNR 0519-69.0 (SNR 0519 for short) is the debris from an explosion of a white dwarf star. After reaching a critical mass, either by pulling matter from a companion star or merging with another white...

The Orion Bar and the bright triple star θ2 Orionis A. (NASA, ESA, CSA, PDRs4All ERS Team, S. Fuenmayor & O. Berné) The Orion nebula is one of the most studied regions of our sky. It sits amidst the constellation of Orion, between the stars, and is so large, close, and bright it can be seen with the naked eye: a vast cloud complex giving birth to and nurturing baby stars. Because it is relatively close, at 1,344 light-years away, it's one of the most important observation targets in the sky for understanding star formation. Although we've been staring at...

Spatial Distribution of NGC 346 Stars Annotated - The massive star cluster NGC 346, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, has long intrigued astronomers with its unusual shape. Now researchers using two separate methods have determined that this shape is partly due to stars and gas spiraling into the center of this cluster in a river-like motion. The red spiral superimposed on NGC 346 traces the movement of stars and gas toward the center. Scientists say this spiraling motion is the most efficient way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster. Credit: NASA, ESA,...

After analyzing data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star’s behavior. Credit: NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)Our Sun routinely blows off parts of its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, in an event known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). However, the Betelgeuse SME blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME!...

Cartwheel Galaxy (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image) A large pink, speckled galaxy resembling a wheel with a small, inner oval, with dusty blue in between on the right, with two smaller spiral galaxies about the same size to the left against a black background. This image of the Cartwheel and its companion galaxies is a composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which reveals details that are difficult to see in the individual images alone. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Webb’s Instruments Reveal New Details About Star Formation The incredible imaging capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space...

It hasn't even been a fortnight since the first image release, and the James Webb Space Telescope is just continuously knocking all our socks off. Only a few images have been officially released, but that hasn't stopped citizen scientists digging through the raw data to see what they can find. One of those is Judy Schmidt, who has been processing raw space data into breathtaking images for years. Courtesy of her painstaking work, we now have absolutely jaw-dropping images of two spectacular spiral galaxies. The first is NGC 628, also known as the Phantom Galaxy. The other is NGC 7496....