Deep in the southern constellation Columba, a spiral galaxy named NGC 1792 shines brighter than most of its size. Even after decades in orbit, NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope has delivered one of its best shots yet of this starry island.
Hubble’s most recent view takes us on a wild voyage into N159, a region in the Large Magellanic Cloud where new stars emerge from vast swirling clouds of gas. This breathtaking image focuses on a small portion of what’s going on, displaying the raw machinery of star formation over a 150-light-year span. It’s located 160,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Dorado, where gravity begins to pull in cold hydrogen gas, paving the way for those stellar nurseries to begin to light up.
Astronomers have long been searching for the faint lights of dying stars, those huge, short-lived fireballs that blaze brightly before fading away into the galaxy’s dark corners. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has now given us a look inside one such system, Apep, a trio of stars 8,000 light years away in a long, agonizing waltz. This mid-infrared image is raw and unprocessed, showing four shells of carbon dust spiraling outward in a tangled mess like an unraveled rope.
For five years, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been kicking up red dust around Jezero Crater, cataloging everything from ancient riverbeds to those weird polka-dotted rocks you see everywhere. But during a routine checkup last month, the six-wheeled rover found something that didn’t belong. A single boulder called Phippsaksla poked out of the cracked bedrock like an unwanted guest at a family reunion. This 31-inch wide rock caught the rover’s cameras with its sharp edges and pockmarked surface, implying it came from farther away from those rusty Martian plains than you’d think.
For years, astronomers have recognized NGC 1068 as a prime example of a spiral galaxy with a secret engine at its core. This barred spiral, located in the constellation Cetus, is roughly 50 million light-years away and measures 100,000 light-years across. Its arms curve out from a bright center bar. A supermassive black hole resides in the core, weighing around 4 million solar masses, or twice the mass of our own Milky Way. That black hole isn’t quiet, as it powers an active galactic core that emits radiation in all directions.
Ryan Gosling floats through space as stars flash past like lightning bugs on a hot summer night. This film is an adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel Project Hail Mary and will be released in US theaters on March 20, 2026. Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher who is dragged from his classroom and forced to take the riskiest gamble of his life.
Star-themed coffee tables have long been a staple of design catalogs. But just a few of them have attempted to fit a whole planetary arrangement within, replete with a sun that simply erupts into view on demand. This one goes all out, transforming an ordinary piece of furniture into a small cosmic drama with stellar implosions and endless orbits.
On Thursday afternoon in Florida, a roar echoed over the Atlantic as Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36. Liftoff was at 3:55 p.m. Eastern, right in the middle of an 88-minute window that had been clear of previous issues. The vehicle, painted white and blue, rose steadily on clouds of fire from its seven BE-4 engines, carrying two small, but mighty, spacecraft from NASA.
Yi Yang, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University, had barely touched down in San Francisco from a long flight when his phone started blowing up with alerts. A massive star – all 22 million light years away in the galaxy NGC 3621 – was going out in a blaze of glory at the end. What we now know as SN 2024ggi started lighting up on April the 10th, 2024. Within a few hours, Yang was on the phone to the European Southern Observatory, begging them to get a look at it. And by the next day, the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile is swinging round to get a glimpse of the distant supernova explosion.
NGC 1511, a spiral galaxy located 50 million light-years away in the serene constellation Hydrus, will not remain calm. New Hubble Space Telescope photos reveal a disc practically edge-on, burning blue with millions of newborn stars. The birthplace of new suns is marked by red and pink hydrogen clouds. Dark ribbons of dust cross the face, obstructing light and heightening the already tense situation.