Astronomy

Astronomy

A hexagonal telescope with a gold exterior and an open, black interior is shown against a black background, highlighting NASA habitable worlds observatory science.
At the end of July, hundreds of scientists convened to plan NASA's upcoming astrophysics flagship mission. Will the US allow it to happen?
Two supermassive black holes on an inevitable death spiral push the limits of Einstein's relativity. New observations reveal even more.
5000 exoplanets
Somewhere, at some point in the history of our Universe, life arose. We're evidence of that here on Earth, but many big puzzles remain.
Full moon over a city skyline at night, high-rise buildings aglow and lights reflecting on the calm water—a scene that inspires 5 science lessons about the moon's impact on our world.
Even just by examining the Moon with the unaided eye, we can learn an incredible amount about the Moon, Earth, and more.
every square degree
When the Hubble Space Telescope first launched in 1990, there was so much we didn't know. Here's how far we've come.
gravitational wave effects on spacetime
With over 300 high-significance gravitational wave detections, we now have a huge unsolved puzzle. Will we invest in finding the solution?
A radio telescope points at the night sky, where stars are arranged in the shape of a large question mark.
13mins
"We've sent out one or two little messages, but we certainly aren't investing billions of dollars shouting out into the cosmos saying, "Hey, we are here. Come say hi.""
comet collide with earth
65 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck Earth. Not only did Jupiter not stop it, but it most likely caused the impact itself.
Black and white image of a star field with one bright object in the center, indicated by a red arrow, believed to be the third interstellar object detected passing through our solar system.
First 'Oumuamua, then Borisov, and now ATLAS have shown us that interstellar interlopers are real. Here's what the newest one teaches us.
Side-by-side images of the Ring Nebula show its structure in different colors, each with a white dotted oval highlighting the central region.
Our nearby Ring Nebula, with JWST's eyes, shows evidence for planet formation. Will the Sun eventually destroy, and then replace, the Earth?
A crane lifts a large metal structure onto a white building at a construction site in a mountainous, arid area under clear blue sky.
The relic signal that first proved the Big Bang has been known and analyzed for 60 years. Join us at the frontiers of modern cosmology!
Images show the planet Uranus. The left image highlights its bright rings, while the right image, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, depicts surprising details of glowing rings and a cloudy atmosphere. Discover more wonders in our solar system with these stunning visuals.
Once every 12 years, Earth, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all line up, opening a window for a joint mission. Our next chance arrives in 2034.
Infographic displays spacecraft names and missions around the Sun, planets, and moons, illustrating the current and planned science fleet exploring the Solar System.
Over the first half of 2025, the US has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science may be a gift to the rest of the world.
A dense field of distant galaxies and bright stars against a black background, as captured in a JWST early galaxies deep space telescope image.
Originally, the abundance of bright, early galaxies shocked astronomers. After 3 years of JWST, we now know what's really going on.
the night sky with stars and trees in the foreground.
Looking at a dark, night sky has filled humans with a sense of awe and wonder since prehistoric times. But appearances can be deceiving.
The Vera Rubin Observatory is situated on a rocky hilltop under a clear, star-filled night sky, with distant mountains and a bright planet visible on the horizon, inspiring astronomers to solve puzzles of the universe.
In just its first 10 hours of observations, the Vera Rubin observatory discovered more than 2000 new asteroids. What else will it teach us?
A dense star field and distant galaxies with bright galaxy clusters and several white squares highlighting specific points in the image.
For hundreds of millions of years, a cosmic fog blocked all signs of starlight. At last, JWST found the galaxies that cleared that fog away.
A cratered, spherical celestial body with a bright spot on its surface floats in dark outer space dotted with stars.
As the closest icy ocean world to Earth, Ceres may be a promising candidate in the search for signs of ancient life.
Infographic illustrating three steps to measure the Hubble Constant, showing Cepheid variable stars, supernovae, and galaxies at increasing distances with redshifted light—highlighting how these methods reveal that the hubble tension is real.
Is the Universe's expansion rate 67 km/s/Mpc, 73 km/s/Mpc, or somewhere in between? The Hubble tension is real and not so easy to resolve.
A composite image showing a galaxy with red circles marking stars on the left and multicolored expanding rings with Earth on the right, all set against a grid background, illustrating concepts like Hubble tension studied by Wendy Freedman.
Different methods of measuring the Universe's expansion rate yield high-precision, incompatible answers. But is the problem robustly real?
Circular astronomical image showing constellations and celestial objects labeled against a dark sky, reminiscent of a NASA PUNCH video sun corona visualization, with a timestamp of 2025-06-03 01:52 at the bottom left.
Launched in March, the PUNCH mission has viewed two incredible coronal mass ejections, tracking them farther from the Sun than ever before.
The tiniest galaxies of all are the most severely dominated by dark matter. Could black holes be the cause of the extra gravity instead?
A blue planet with visible rings and several small, bright Uranus moons is set against a darkened black background.
Viewing Uranus's largest moons with Hubble, astronomers hoped to find darkening on the trailing side. They found the exact opposite instead.
An illustration shows a cosmic ray entering Earth’s atmosphere, creating a cascade of secondary particles—some of the highest energy particles astronomers study—detected by an array of sensors on the ground.
On Earth, our particle accelerators can reach tera-electron-volt (TeV) energies. Particles from space are thousands of times as energetic.
Image of two large elliptical galaxies surrounded by several smaller, colorful galaxies and stars against a dark background in space.
The first galaxies were irregular blobs of gas and stars. But modern features, like spiral arms and bars, appeared earlier than expected.
A grey, icy planet or moon with surface cracks is shown against a backdrop of stars and the Milky Way galaxy.
The hunt for extraterrestrial life begins with planets like Earth. But our inhabited Earth once looked very different than Earth does today.
A split image shows a star field on the left and a COSMOS-Web survey area diagram on the right, with labeled NIRCam and MIRI footprints alongside the moon for scale, highlighting galaxies explored by JWST science.
The COSMOS-Web has just finalized their release of their full field: larger and deeper than any other JWST program. Here's what's inside.
Interior view of a large observatory telescope in operation at night, with orange light trails and a starry sky visible through the open roof.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will image the southern sky using the largest digital camera ever built.
Edwin Hubble and Andromeda galaxy
For decades, astronomers have claimed the Milky Way will merge with Andromeda in ~4 billion years. Here's why, in 2025, that seems unlikely.