This image depicts the collapse and supernova explosion of a massive star, with a black hole (right) forming from the collapse and debris raining down onto a companion star (left), contaminating its atmosphere. When most people think about archaeology, they often envision deep jungles or ancient ruins, but a team of astronomers is taking archaeology to a whole new frontier—space. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, they have conducted an unprecedented investigation into the remnants left by a star that exploded more than a million years ago, shedding new light on the explosive processes that shaped our universe. The system under investigation, GRO J1655-40, is home to a black hole with nearly seven times the mass of the Sun and a companion star with about half the Sun's mass. However, this stellar system wasn’t always like this. It was once home to two bright stars—one of which ultimately exploded in a supernova, marking the beginning of a new phase for the system. ...

  In a captivating new image released by NASA, ESA, and CSA, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captures an extraordinary cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring. Initially resembling a single, oddly shaped galaxy, what is actually seen is the rare alignment of two galaxies—one much closer to Earth than the other. At the heart of the image lies a massive elliptical galaxy that serves as the "lensing" galaxy, sitting in the foreground. The more distant spiral galaxy, which is thousands of light-years away, appears to be warped around the closer galaxy, forming a perfect ring. This stunning visual is the result of gravitational lensing, a process first predicted by Albert Einstein, where light from a distant object is bent as it passes through the gravitational field of an intervening galaxy or galaxy cluster. Einstein rings are an unusual and rare sight, as they depend on an incredibly precise alignment of the objects involved. When the light from a far-off galaxy or cl...

  On the left, an enhanced-color image of Neptune from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. On the right, that image is combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, showcasing cyan splotches of auroral activity and white clouds from Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), overlaid on Hubble’s full image of the planet. For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has successfully captured bright auroral activity on Neptune, a significant breakthrough in the study of the ice giant. Auroras, typically seen on Earth and other planets in our solar system, occur when energetic particles, often from the Sun, become trapped in a planet’s magnetic field and collide with the upper atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light. While tantalizing hints of auroral activity on Neptune were previously observed — notably during NASA’s Voyager 2 flyby in 1989 — imaging and confirming these auroras had long eluded astronomers. This new discovery marks Neptune as the fin...

  NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured high-resolution near- and mid-infrared images of Herbig-Haro 49/50, revealing intricate features of a young star's outflow. The jet's interaction with surrounding gas and dust forms arc-like bow shocks, offering insights into star formation and jet activity. A distant spiral galaxy appears in the background, creating a striking visual contrast. Webb's detailed infrared observations help researchers understand the early stages of low-mass star formation, like that of our Sun. Move over, Ben & Jerry’s—NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just served up the universe’s quirkiest dessert: a swirling "Cosmic Tornado" of gas and dust (Herbig-Haro 49/50) topped with a photobombing spiral galaxy. This celestial sundae isn’t edible, but it’s packed with science sprinkles!   What’s in This Cosmic Treat? The Whipped Cream: HH 49/50, a frothy jet of gas blasted out by a baby star (a protostar) in the Chamaeleon I Cloud—a stellar nu...

  This image represents about 1.5% of Euclid’s Deep Field South, revealing faint, distant galaxies, including a galaxy cluster nearly 6 billion light-years away. The Euclid mission, led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with significant contributions from NASA, is on a groundbreaking journey to investigate one of the universe's greatest mysteries: why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate? This phenomenon, referred to as "dark energy," is one of the most puzzling aspects of cosmology, and Euclid aims to provide key insights by capturing images of billions of galaxies. On March 19, ESA released a portion of the mission's data to the public, showcasing the mission's early progress. The data, labeled as a “quick” release, offers a preview of what’s to come from Euclid’s detailed observations. This initial dataset focuses on specific regions of the sky, known as the "deep fields," which will serve as Euclid’s focal points for its most distant ob...

  In this week’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, we are introduced to a stunning view of one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors – the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). A dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away, the SMC resides primarily in the constellation Tucana, with a small part extending into the constellation Hydrus. Because of its proximity, the SMC is one of the few galaxies visible to the naked eye from Earth, without the need for a telescope or binoculars. For stargazers in the southern hemisphere and certain northern latitudes, the SMC appears as a faint fragment of the Milky Way itself, though in reality, it is far removed from our galaxy. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope's advanced 2.4-meter ‘eye’ and highly sensitive instruments, the view of the SMC is much more detailed and vivid than what is visible to the human eye. The Wide Field Camera 3 on Hubble captured this breathtaking scene using four different filters that observe distinc...