Astrophysics Stories

Illustration of a large planet with a grayish atmosphere partially illuminated by a distant bright star in space, surrounded by a dark sky dotted with small stars.

When Will That Star Dim? Amateur Planet-Chasers Got You!

2 min read

A planet swings in front of its star, dimming the starlight we see. Events like these, called transits, provide us with bounties of information about exoplanets–planets around stars other than the Sun. But predicting when these special events occur can…

Article15 hours ago
A pair of interacting galaxies. The larger of the two galaxies is slightly right of center, and composed of a hazy, bright, white center and a ring of gaseous filaments, which are different shades of red and orange. Toward the bottom left and bottom right of the ring are filaments of gas spiraling inward toward the core. At the top left of the ring is a noticeable gap, bordered by two large, orange pockets of dust and gas. The smaller galaxy to its left is made of hazy white gas and dust, which becomes more diffuse farther away from its center. To this galaxy’s bottom left, there is a smaller, more diffuse gas cloud that wafts outward toward the edges. Many red, orange, and white galaxies are spread throughout, with some hazier in composition and others having more defined spiral patterns.

NASA’s Webb Provides Another Look Into Galactic Collisions

4 min read

Smile for the camera! An interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107, seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright “eyes” and the wide semicircular “smile.” The…

Article2 days ago

NASA Completes Spacecraft to Transport, Support Roman Space Telescope

5 min read

The spacecraft bus that will deliver NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to its orbit and enable it to function once there is now complete after years of construction, installation, and testing. Now that the spacecraft is assembled, engineers will…

Article3 days ago
A field of galaxies of various shapes, sizes, colors, and types against a black backgrouns.

NASA’s Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe

4 min read

With the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new…

Article3 days ago
A spiral galaxy, seen up close and face-on. It is colored yellow and glowing brightly at the oval-shaped center, showing older and cooler stars, and it becomes bluer out to the edge of the disc where the stars are younger and hotter. It has a number of somewhat patchy spiral arms curling around, with sparkling areas where stars form. The black background is visible in the corners.

Hubble Examines a Spiral Star Factory

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo named NGC 5668. It is relatively near to us at 90 million light-years from Earth and quite accessible for astronomers to study with both space- and…

Article7 days ago
At center right is a compact star cluster composed of luminous red, blue, and white points of light. Faint jets with clumpy, diffuse material extend in various directions from the bright cluster. Above and to the right is a smaller cluster of stars. Translucent red wisps of material stretch across the scene, though there are patches and a noticeable gap in the top left corner that reveal the black background of space. Background galaxies are scattered across this swath of space, appearing as small blue-white and orange-white dots or fuzzy, thin disks. There are two noticeably larger points, foreground stars, with diffraction spikes: an orange-white point on the left, and a blue-white point in the top right.

NASA’s Webb Peers into the Extreme Outer Galaxy

5 min read

Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison,…

Article1 week ago
This is an artist's depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. They are both surrounded by an accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole. Confined by powerful magnetic fields, the jets blaze across space at nearly the speed of light as devastating beams of energy.

NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo

5 min read

Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.…

Article2 weeks ago
A spiral galaxy with a bright-white core, a glowing disk thick with swirling patterns of dark dust, and a faint halo around the disk. It is on a black background with a few small, distant galaxies and some foreground stars around it.

Hubble Examines a Busy Galactic Center

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands. The compact…

Article2 weeks ago
An image of a celestial scene showing two bright stars against a dark background, with one star appearing larger and more luminous on the right, and a smaller, dimmer star to the left. A planet is silhouetted as it transits in front of the larger star. The background is filled with a soft glow and scattered faint stars.

Join the Eclipsing Binary Patrol and Spot Rare Stellar Pairs!

2 min read

Eclipsing binaries are special pairs of stars that cross in front of one another as they orbit—stars that take turns blocking one another from our view. At Eclipsing Binary Patrol, the newest NASA-funded citizen science project, you’ll have a chance to help…

Article2 weeks ago
On a black background, a large orange and white orb is surrounded by a diffuse, grainy, orange halo. The halo appears to have more material on its right side than its left.

NASA’s Hubble, MAVEN Help Solve the Mystery of Mars’ Escaping Water

6 min read

Mars was once a very wet planet as is evident in its surface geological features. Scientists know that over the last 3 billion years, at least some water went deep underground, but what happened to the rest? Now, NASA’s Hubble…

Article2 weeks ago