Tag: Astrophysics

  • Discovery Alert: ‘Super-Earth’ Swings from Super-Heated to Super-Chill

    Discovery Alert: ‘Super-Earth’ Swings from Super-Heated to Super-Chill

    The Discovery A possible “super-Earth” orbits a relatively close, Sun-like star, and could be a habitable world – but one of extreme temperature swings, from scorching heat to deep freeze. Key Facts The newly confirmed planet is the outermost of…

  • NASA’s Webb Peers Deeper into Mysterious Flame Nebula

    NASA’s Webb Peers Deeper into Mysterious Flame Nebula

    The Flame Nebula, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the Flame Nebula, there are objects so small that their cores will never be able to fuse…

  • Hubble Unveils a Glittering View of Sh2-284

    Hubble Unveils a Glittering View of Sh2-284

    A tiny fraction of the stellar nursery known as Sh2-284 is visible in this glittering, star-filled NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. This immense region of gas and dust is the birthing place of stars, which shine among the clouds. Bright…

  • Hubble Jams With A Cosmic Guitar

    Hubble Jams With A Cosmic Guitar

    Arp 105 is a dazzling ongoing merger between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy drawn together by gravity, characterized by a long, drawn out tidal tail of stars and gas more than 362,000 light-years long. The immense tail, which…

  • Hubble Spies a Spectacular Starburst Galaxy

    Hubble Spies a Spectacular Starburst Galaxy

    Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s…

  • Hubble Examines Stars Ensconced in a Cocoon of Gas

    Hubble Examines Stars Ensconced in a Cocoon of Gas

    An open cluster of stars shines through misty, cocoon-like gas clouds in this Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 460. NGC 460 is located in a region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.…

  • NASA Webb Wows With Incredible Detail in Actively Forming Star System

    NASA Webb Wows With Incredible Detail in Actively Forming Star System

    High-resolution near-infrared light captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows extraordinary new detail and structure in Lynds 483 (L483). Two actively forming stars are responsible for the shimmering ejections of gas and dust that gleam in orange, blue, and…

  • Hubble Spies a Spiral in the Water Snake

    Hubble Spies a Spiral in the Water Snake

    This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a vibrant spiral galaxy called NGC 5042 resides about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the water snake). The galaxy nicely fills the frame of this Hubble image, while a…

  • NASA’s Webb Exposes Complex Atmosphere of Starless Super-Jupiter

    NASA’s Webb Exposes Complex Atmosphere of Starless Super-Jupiter

    An international team of researchers has discovered that previously observed variations in brightness of a free-floating planetary-mass object known as SIMP 0136 must be the result of a complex combination of atmospheric factors, and cannot be explained by clouds alone.…

  • Hubble Captures New View of Colorful Veil

    Hubble Captures New View of Colorful Veil

    In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a famous — and frequently photographed — supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. The remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that…