Photo credit: Katie Jameson/Caltech/DSA Project
Construction crews will soon start work on a remote valley floor in Nevada. Caltech astronomers intend to place 1,650 radio dishes across a rectangle roughly 20 kilometers long and 16 kilometers wide. The finished array will sweep the visible sky several times during its first five years of operation and move 100 times faster than any radio telescope now in use.
A dark ribbon of dust slices across the glowing heart of a spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, creating the appearance that earned Messier 64 its well-known nickname, the Black Eye Galaxy. The feature stands out even in modest amateur telescopes, yet it only hints at far deeper activity inside.
Astronomers aimed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope at a distant galaxy cluster called Abell S1063 with one goal in mind. They wanted to hunt for some of the very first stars that ever formed. What the telescope delivered instead turned out far more revealing. Tucked behind the cluster sat a faint red object known as GLIMPSE-17775. Gravity from the foreground cluster acted like a natural magnifying glass, stretching a 30-hour observation into the effective power of an 80-hour exposure. The result gave researchers the deepest spectrum ever captured of one of these mysterious little red dots.
Engineers as well as designers from Axiom Space and Prada pulled back the curtain last weekend in New York on the inner layer that will sit closest to astronauts during future lunar surface work. The garment forms a key piece of the AxEMU spacesuit developed for NASA’s Artemis program. Astronauts step into this form-fitting piece first. Light gray fabric stretches across the body in a streamlined silhouette while clear tubing traces deliberate paths over the torso, arms, and legs. A single red stripe runs down one sleeve as a quiet nod to Prada’s activewear roots.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured a stunning composite image of galaxy M88, which shows a massive spiral system twisted at an angle, stretching its appearance and displaying an orderly set of arms looping inward with exceptional symmetry. Pink knots represent the formation of new stars, blue clusters outline younger stellar populations, and darker red lanes highlight the disk’s dust. The galaxy’s nucleus is surrounded by older stars that emit a warm light.
Photo credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham/Emmett Given
Astronomers released a composite image of Westerlund 2 that merges X-ray observations from Chandra with infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The result turns a distant star cluster into a scene of gleaming points ringed by neon pink against swaths of warmer dust tones.
Astronomers examining deep views from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified a supermassive black hole that reached enormous size while the material around it had barely begun to form stars or build a full galaxy. The object, known as Abell2744-QSO1 or simply QSO1, sat in the universe when it was only about 700 million years old. Its light has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us.
NASA released a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope that brings a modest galactic resident into view. ESO 490-017 lies about 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The galaxy spans roughly 12,000 light-years from one side to the other and belongs to the dwarf irregular category, a group whose stars and gas sit in loose, disorganized arrangements rather than neat spirals or bright central cores.
Rows of plain sheds sit on former cattle land near Rockwood in central Texas. During daylight hours they look ordinary enough to store tools or hay. Once the sun drops low, the roofs slide open together and expose long lines of telescopes mounted on solid bases. Owners scattered around the globe then take control from their laptops or phones. They point the instruments, collect images, and gather data on distant galaxies or nebulae without ever leaving home.
Messier 51 (M51) is located around 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. Astronomers call it the Whirlpool Galaxy because of the elegant way its spiral arms extend outward from the center. NGC 5195, a smaller companion galaxy, interacts with it, helping to sculpt its sweeping characteristics. Recent observations have focused on one stretch of a spiral arm where stars develop in huge groupings. Infrared photos from the James Webb Space Telescope now reveal details hidden inside dense clouds of gas and dust.