galaxies

SSpace

NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang

January 28, 2026

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries…

SSpace

Spacecraft components configured for testing rest on a table.

January 28, 2026

Engineers and scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, completed tests this month on a…

SSpace

Six Hubble images of distorted galaxies are organized in a two-row mosaic. From left to right, the top row of galaxies appears as follows: The left panel has a galaxy that resembles the number nine tilted on its side to the left and has red-orange regions scattered with blue knots. The center square shows an edge-on spiral galaxy appearing like a white thin bar extending from 8 ou2019clock to 2 ou2019clock. It has a bright, compact core and a small background spiral galaxy just below the core. The right panel shows two merging galaxies forming a convoluted shape that extends from 8 ou2019clock to 2 ou2019clock. The bottom row of galaxies appears as follows: Left square contains a face-on spiral with faint, broad arcs of material to its left and right. The center panel has a hazy white, face-on spiral with a lumpy vertical line to its right that appears to curve around its core. The right panel shows an orange elliptical galaxy with a lumpy blueish galaxy curving around it to the right.

January 27, 2026

A team of astronomers has employed a cutting-edge, artificial intelligence-assisted technique to uncover rare astronomical phenomena within archived…

PPhysics

January 23, 2026

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration is releasing results that, for the first time, combine all six years…

SScience

$Image shows a large spiral galaxy that that has a bright white center, with several lanes of reddish-brown dust and gas in between faint white arms. The galaxy takes up the center third of the frame. There are several thousand stars, some with diffraction spikes, scattered around the image. This image is labeled Hubble. A small box outlining an area at the center of the galaxy leads a pullout square at the top right. The image, labeled Webb, is dark with a white glowing oval at the center.$

January 14, 2026

The Circinus Galaxy, a galaxy about 13 million light-years away, contains an active supermassive black hole that continues…

SScience

Seven planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) will be aligned in the night sky just after sunset, around 6 to 8:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 28.

January 13, 2026

“The opposition of Jupiter is not a one-night event by any means,” said John Gianforte, director of the…

SScience

A region of space is filled with stars and clumps of glowing orange and tan dust. A small portion of the sky at the center of the image is outlined with a white box. Lines extend from the corner of the box to the inset panel at the top right showing a magnified version of the outlined portion of the image. In the inset, there are smatterings of dim whitish-blueish stars and about seven glowing red orbs across the center in a line. Also across the center of the inset is a green glow. The background of the image is filled with stars and galaxies of various shapes and colors.

January 7, 2026

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted two rare kinds of dust in the dwarf galaxy…

SSpace

James Webb Space Telescope image showing a broad area of space with many small galaxies, four of which are highlighted in pull-out boxes. The four highlighted galaxies are very small, appearing as points of light. Black areas of the overall image indicate where the telescope did not collect data - a vertical section in the center and a square in the lower left corner.

January 6, 2026

After combing through NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s archive of sweeping extragalactic cosmic fields, a small team of…

SSpace

A region of space mostly filled with background galaxies, with one prominent star at upper left. A large blob of purple haze occupies much of the field. Within the purple region, an unremarkable area is outlined with a dashed white circle.

January 5, 2026

A team using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new type of astronomical object — a starless,…

SScience

$This release features a composite image of a galaxy cluster first discovered on New Year's Eve day, 2020. The cluster appears here as a large collection of brilliant white lights, each a distinct galaxy. A neon purple cloud stretches across the cluster's crowded core. Many of the hundred-plus galaxies in the cluster are in two clumps of galaxies towards the top and bottom of center. Some are encircled by a faint glowing haze, while a few foreground stars gleam with diffraction spikes. Some of the smaller galaxies are tinted blue, orange, or red, and some appear more oblong than round, suggesting spiral shapes viewed edge-on. The neon purple cloud sits at the heart of the image, surrounding the most densely-packed part of the cluster. This cloud, which spreads vertically across the cluster, is multimillion-degree gas observed by Chandra. The two clumps of observable galaxies, and the spread of superheated gas, reveal that the Champagne Cluster is in fact two clusters in the process of colliding. With the two clusters of sparkling light clinking together, and the auspicious discovery date, astronomers have dubbed the merged cosmic structure "The Champagne Cluster".$