The Universe
Hubble Views the Dawn of a Sun-like Star
Looking like a glittering cosmic geode, a trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T […]
Read MoreNASA Names Finalists of the Power to Explore Challenge
NASA has selected the nine finalists of the Power to Explore Challenge, a national competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes. NASA selected nine finalists out of the 45 semifinalist student essays in the Power to Explore Challenge, a national competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes. Contestants were […]
Read MoreNASA’s New Hubble E-Book Spotlights Universe’s Best-Kept Dark Secrets
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope team has released a new downloadable e-book in the Hubble Focus series, called “Hubble Focus: The Dark Universe.” This e-book highlights the mission’s recent discoveries about two mysterious components of our universe, known as dark energy — an unexplained cosmic pressure that’s speeding up the universe’s expansion — and dark matter, […]
Read MoreNASA’s Webb Probes an Extreme Starburst Galaxy
Amid a site teeming with new and young stars lies an intricate substructure. A team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82). Located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, this galaxy is relatively compact in size but hosts a frenzy of star […]
Read MoreThat Starry Night Sky? It’s Full of Eclipses
Our star, the Sun, on occasion joins forces with the Moon to offer us Earthlings a spectacular solar eclipse – like the one that will be visible to parts of the United States, Mexico, and Canada on April 8. But out there, among the other stars, how often can we see similar eclipses? The answer […]
Read MoreHubble Views a Dim but Distinct Galaxy
This image of the softly luminous spiral galaxy UGC 11105 is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It lies about 110 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Astronomers have different ways of quantifying how bright celestial objects are. Apparent magnitude is one of those methods. It describes how bright an object appears to an observer […]
Read MoreHubble Captures a Suspected Galaxy Encounter
UGC 3912 is classified as a spiral galaxy … but you wouldn’t know it from this detailed NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. UGC 3912’s distorted shape is typically indicative of a gravitational encounter with another galaxy. When galaxies interact – either brush up against each other’s gravitational fields or even collide – their stars, dust, […]
Read MoreHubble Studies a Sparkling Galaxy Pair
A pair of small, interacting galaxies shine in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The larger of the two galaxies is named NGC 5410 and was discovered in 1787 by British astronomer William Herschel. It spans 80,000 light-years across and has a bright white bar of stars at its center. It is also a […]
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