A quadruple star system known as TIC 120362137 is the most compact of its kind discovered in the universe. Four stars are trapped in an extremely tight dance that fits snuggly within the distance between our sun and Jupiter, which is a rather little space to be playing a cosmic musical chairs game with four stars in tow. Astronomers first saw this extraordinary system using data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between 2019 and 2024. That data was then supplemented with additional observations from ground-based telescopes and spectrographs, allowing scientists to take a closer look and see how all four stars were moving.

Astronomers have just released a stunning new image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, combining two distinct views: one from NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which provides incredibly sharp details of the nebula, and another from the Euclid telescope, which paints broad brushstrokes of the larger cosmic scene. This planetary nebula, NGC 6543, is quite large, situated some 4,400 light years away in the constellation Draco and resembling a gazing eye with shimmering shells of gas that the dying star has emitted in a succession of last breaths as it nears the end of its existence.

Photo credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
The Cranium Nebula has piqued astronomers’ interest, due to some stunning new images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. These photos reveal the layers of a faraway cloud of gas and dust wrapped tightly around a star as it begins to die. This planetary nebula, officially known as PMR 1 and informally known as the exposed Cranium due to its uncanny appearance to a brain tucked inside a phantom skull, sits quietly in a backwater area of space that has only recently gained attention.

Astronomers pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at HD 61005, a star in the Puppis constellation that is approximately 120 light-years away. This star has roughly the same weight and temperature as our own Sun, but it is approximately 100 million years younger, a billion years or so younger than the Sun’s current age of 5 billion years. As one would anticipate from a young star, the surface of HD 61005 emits a far larger flow of charged particles; its wind is around three times faster and 25 times denser than our own solar wind.

Hubble has just discovered one of the darkest galaxies known to exist. It’s named Candidate Dark Galaxy-2, or CDG-2 for short. This faint object is located in the Perseus galaxy cluster, around 300 million light years from Earth.

LHS 1903 is a tiny red dwarf star in the Lynx constellation, 116 light-years away. This small star is around half the mass of our Sun and emits a faint glow that is scarcely visible against the night sky. Nonetheless, subsequent observations have revealed a system of four planets, and what they’re exhibiting is a pattern that utterly contradicts our assumptions.

A star almost identical to our sun is nearing the end of its life in the Cygnus constellation, about 1000 light years away. Astronomers call this spectacle the Egg Nebula, or CRL 2688 for short. Hubble’s most recent image provides a magnificent view of this particular object in unprecedented detail, thanks to the combination of new data and previously captured images. What we get is a stunning display of light cutting through the dust.

Hubble’s stunning views of distant galaxies continue to surprise us, and this latest photo of NGC 7722 serves as a gentle reminder. This lenticular beauty is a true head-scratcher, as it’s located in the constellation Pegasus, a good 187 million light-years away, and it combines characteristics from two sorts of galaxies that you’d expect to see separately. There are the graceful arms of a spiral and the smooth, rounded profile of an elliptical, but NGC 7722 stands out with a pristine disk, no spiral arms, a bright central bulge, and an outside halo that simply glows.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to capture views that transport you far into the cosmos, and this latest look at Pismis 24 is particularly compelling. When you combine that with Chandra’s keen eye for high-energy bursts, you have an unmistakable depiction of chaos and creation. Pismis 24 is a young cluster of massive stars that are still in their prime, clustered together in a tight young group around 5,500 light years away in the constellation Scorpius, hidden within the expansive Lobster Nebula section of NGC 6357, one of the Milky Way’s most prolific star formation locations.

The Helix Nebula is one of the most beautiful planetary nebulae visible from Earth, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently captured the finest image yet. This bright shell of gas and dust, located approximately 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, is the last act of a star that bears a remarkable likeness to our own sun. The most recent near-infrared measurements have pinpointed a portion of the nebula in extraordinary detail, revealing far more than previous observatories could detect.