the universe

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…

$A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. At center-left, a larger star is circled. It has prominent diffraction spikes and an arc of white at right.$

January 22, 2026

Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain…

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Supernova Remnant Video From NASA’s Chandra Is Decades in Making

January 7, 2026

A new video shows the evolution of Kepler’s Supernova Remnant using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured…

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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…

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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…

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An illustration of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, its companion star, and a dusty wake. The disk of a red-orange star is in the center. It is surrounded by a diffuse orange cloud representing its extended atmosphere. Below it about one stellar diameter away is a yellow dot representing a smaller companion star. From the companion, a dark red cloud wraps around in a counterclockwise direction. It begins very narrow and expands as it gets further from the companion, finally disappearing at the outer edge of the diffuse orange cloud around 10 ou2019clock. The words u201cartistu2019s conceptu201d are at lower right.

January 6, 2026

Using new observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, astronomers tracked the influence of a recently…

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