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This composite image of the Crab Nebula uses data from NASA's Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer missions.
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The image is dominated by the X-ray emission from the Crab nebula, shown in shades of blue and white. At the center is a bright ball surrounded by an oval of light whose long axis is tilted just to the left. Rising up and to the right from that oval is a cloud of material that looks like a witch’s hat with a broad brim and dented point. From the central ball there is also a bent stream of material to the left and downward. The optical light, in purple, appears as a background to the blue and white as a wispy cloud. The infrared emission, shown in pink, surrounds the blue and white light, looking like a diffuse web.
NASA Missions Study the Crab Nebula
The blue dots in this field of galaxies were detected by NASA's NuSTAR.
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On a field of black there are small yellow and red dots spread across the image. About a dozen larger, blue dots are scattered amongst the smaller, paler sources.
A Black Hole 'Choir'
NASA's Webb captured this image of the star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.
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The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which, have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.
Webb Reveals the Carina Nebula
In this mosaic stretching 340 light-years across, NASA's Webb’s showcases the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region.
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Swirling reds, whites, and light yellows mix around in front of a starry sky.
Webb Catches A Cosmic Tarantula
NASA's WISE captured this image of the Andromeda galaxy, also called Messier 31 or M31.
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M31 is a spiral galaxy seen in this image against a black sky speckled with blue points of light. It appears like a flying disk toy seen tilted up and to the left, with a bright orange circle of light and tendrils of orange and pale blue light swirling in toward a central bright, white spot.
WISE Studies Our Neighbor Andromeda
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission captured this mosaic of the Heart and Soul nebulae.
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A starry background is covered by green clouds of material. There are two reddish bubbles, each surrounded by a thin tendril of pale green light, one lies at the lower left of the image, the other in the center right.
WISE Sees the Heart and Soul Nebulae
This simulated image of part of the Andromeda galaxy highlights the potential of NASA’s upcoming Roman mission.
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This image shows the detector “footprint” of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Six columns of three squares are arranged such that the top of the middle two columns are close to the top of the image, the next two columns are a little lower down, and the two outer columns are even lower. Within these square are seen a simulated image that has a background of pale black dotted with stars. The squares on the lower left side have brighter light, which would represent regions of the sky closer to the center of the Andromeda galaxy.
Simulated Image Demonstrates Roman's Future Power
This illustration explains the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces in the universe.
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This infographic is done mostly in shades of blue. At the top left is the title: "Weak Force." Below that is a block of text that reads: "The weak force can change a quark from one type to another: from up to down. That change could turn a proton into a neutron or vice versa. This process would also produce a neutrino and an electron or anti-electron through a process called beta decay." Below and to the right of the text is an illustration of a blue proton and a red neutron with pop outs. The proton is on the left. Its pop out shows a cluster of two yellow up quarks and one pink down quark. An arrow is pointing to one of the up quarks. The pop up for the neutron shows a cluster of two pink down quarks and one yellow up quark. An arrow points to one of the down quarks, indicating that it flipped from an up quark, which changed the proton into a neutron.
Weak Force
This festive portrait of our Milky Way galaxy comes from ESA's Planck mission.
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This oval image represents a view of the entire sky unfolded and laid out flat. Running horizontally across the middle of the oval is a bright line of white, which is light emitted by gas and dust in the plane of the Milky Way. Mottled red fills the oval with a few areas of yellow, especially along the plane of the Milky Way and extending above and below it. Over all of this, in the center, is a thick ring of blue.
A Milky Way 'Mixer' Amongst the Stars
NASA's Spitzer captured this image of nearby galaxy Messier 81 for its 16th anniversary.
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M81 is a grand spiral galaxy, and in this image its arms appear as green vines twisting inward toward a central bright spot. Embedded in those arms are spots of yellow and orange light. All of this is on a background dotted with red and blue pinpricks of light.
An Infrared View of the M81 Galaxy
¡Esta fuerza escalofriante te dejará temblando de terror!
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Este póster muestra un murciélago verde siniestro que emerge del cosmos, empujando objetos como galaxias y estrellas hacia el vacío del espacio exterior.
Energía oscura – "Galaxy of Horrors" póster (En Español)
This image of supernova remnant RCW 86 combines data from NASA's Chandra, WISE, and Spitzer as well as ESA's XMM-Newton.
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This starry background has red clouds scattered across the image. There’s a wide arc of blue, white and green at the bottom right of the image, and a thin arc running over the left and top of the image. Together these arcs almost form a circle.
Supernova Remnant RCW 86
This image shows the magnetic field of our Milky Way galaxy as seen by the Planck satellite.
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This oval image represents a view of the entire sky unfolded and laid out flat. Across the middle is a line of dark brown, with a swirl of brown around the center of the image. At the edges the line of brown becomes wider and more diffuse. These lines and swirls of brown are embedded in an off-white mottled background. Throughout the image are lines running generally parallel to the central bar of brown, but with some wave-like deviations above and below it. Some of the oval on the top and near the bottom is just a flat tan color, which represents places where there is no magnetic field information.
Planck Takes Magnetic Fingerprint of Our Galaxy
This image of Comet Lulin, taken Jan. 28, 2009 merges data acquired by NASA's Swift mission.
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A bright ball of white light is surrounded by a halo of purple and pink. The purple appears in a circle around the white light while the pink is offset to the left and below the central white ball. This is all on a black background dotted with blue stars.
NASA's Swift Spies Comet Lulin
NASA's Spitzer penetrates dust hiding the Milky Way's center in this image.
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At the center of this starry vista is a bright white spot surrounded by warm knots of red clouds. The clouds extend across the image from left to right and nearly all the way from the bottom to the top, with some black sky visible toward the top of the image. Within the red wispy clouds, there are clouds that appear black, regions that are so dense, they are blocking our view.
Revealing the Milky Way's Center
These doomed worlds were among the first and creepiest to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar.
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A poster done in the style of movie posters from the 1950s and 1960s showing the zombie worlds with a colorful nebula and a planet being blasted by twin beams of radiation by the pulsar host star. The overall image creates the look of a scary skull.
Zombie Worlds – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
Flaring, active regions of our Sun are highlighted in this image combining observations from several telescopes.
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The Sun appears as a red-hued marble with black branching strips and few bright dots in white with small haloes of pale blue and electric green. All around the edge of the Sun is a glow, appearing like short fur in orange, yellow, and two bright spots of white on the right and left sides.
Searing Sun Seen in X-rays
This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected by ESA's Planck mission.
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This image shows an oval that represents the whole sky if you folded it out onto a flat piece of paper. The oval is dotted with many regions ranging from blue, green, yellow and red in color. While the image looks chaotic, the blue regions are nearly always surrounded by green. The yellow are embedded in the green, and red embedded in the yellow. These show temperature differences in the early universe, which ultimately lead us to see where matter clumped together to form the structures we see today.
Best Map Ever of the Universe
This illustration explains the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces in the universe.
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This infographic is done mostly in shades of blue. At the top left is the title: "Electromagnetic Force." Below that is a block of text that reads: "The electromagnetic force holds together objects with opposite electrical charges, like the proton and electron that make up one hydrogen atom." Below and to the right of the text is an illustration of a hydrogen atom. A blue circle representing a proton sits in the middle of a larger, transparent white circle. A yellow electron is orbiting the proton, illustrated by a streak of yellow trailing the proton across the top of the white circle.
Electromagnetic Force
Our Milky Way galaxy is ablaze with dust in this all-sky map from Planck.
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This oval image represents a view of the entire sky unfolded and laid out flat. Across the middle of the image is a bright yellow line, which is light that was emitted by dust in the plane of the Milky Way. There are additional swirls and loops arising from that line of yellow, making the sky look like it is filled with flames.
Polarized Dust Lights Up Milky Way
NASA’s Webb has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy.
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A large pink, speckled galaxy resembling a wheel with a small, inner oval, with dusty blue in between on the right. Two smaller spiral galaxies about the same size are to the left, all against a black background.
Webb Captures the Cartwheel Galaxy
This chillingly haunted galaxy became a cosmic cemetery only a few billion years after the big bang!
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A scarlet star looms behind the ruins of an exoplanet that resembles the shape of a skull. A red galaxy arm is visible in the background. It is apparent that this galaxy, named MACS 2129-1, has been decaying since it stopped producing stars only a few billion years after the big bang.
Galactic Graveyard – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This image of the whole sky shows 22 months of data recorded by NASA's NICER mission aboard the International Space Station.
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On a black background are a network of orange filaments connecting a number of bright spots. The bright spots indicate places where the filaments cross, and are sources in the sky where NICER often points its telescope. The swirling loops between those points reveal the path NICER’s telescope takes between these sources.
NICER's Night Moves Trace the X-ray Sky
This animated GIF builds up the southern sky mosaic from 13 sections captured by NASA's TESS.
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A circular view of the sky captured by NASA’s TESS mission that has unfolded like a paper fan around a central point. Each segment looks like a film strip studded with stars.
TESS's Southern Sky Panorama
NASA's Swift imaged the extremely luminous afterglow of explosion GRB 080319B.
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The image has two views of the same portion of sky. On the left, the X-ray light is shown in yellows and oranges like a bright ball of fire on a black background. On the right is the optical view with several balls of white light showing a starry background. In the center of the image is one of the balls of light but surrounded by an orange and green halo.
A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth

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Researchers observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed silicate cloud features in a distant planet’s atmosphere.
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NASA's Webb Spots Swirling, Gritty Clouds on Remote Planet
NASA's Webb Spots Swirling, Gritty Clouds on Remote Planet
UGCA 307 hangs against an irregular backdrop of distant galaxies in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Hubble Sees a Diminutive Dwarf Galaxy
Hubble Sees a Diminutive Dwarf Galaxy
The Large Area Telescope aboard NASA’s Fermi satellite can give us a glimpse of an otherwise invisible cosmic light show.
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NASA's Fermi Captures Dynamic Gamma-Ray Sky in New Animation
NASA's Fermi Captures Dynamic Gamma-Ray Sky in New Animation
The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star was one of the first observations made by NASA’s Webb in June 2022.
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NASA's Webb Telescope Captures Rarely Seen Prelude to Supernova
NASA's Webb Telescope Captures Rarely Seen Prelude to Supernova
The irregular spiral galaxy NGC 5486 hangs against a background of dim, distant galaxies in this Hubble image.
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Hubble Spots a Star-Forming Spiral
Hubble Spots a Star-Forming Spiral
This image features a galaxy called 3C 297 that is lonelier than expected after it likely pulled in and absorbed its former companion galaxies.
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Chandra Helps Astronomers Discover a Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy
Chandra Helps Astronomers Discover a Surprisingly Lonely Galaxy
Scientists created a gargantuan synthetic survey showing what we can expect from the Roman Space Telescope’s future observations.
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Millions of Galaxies Emerge in New Simulated Images From NASA's Roman
Millions of Galaxies Emerge in New Simulated Images From NASA's Roman
A “jellyfish galaxy” with trailing tentacles of stars hangs in inky blackness in this Hubble image.
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Hubble Peers at a Galactic Seascape
Hubble Peers at a Galactic Seascape
A new simulation shows how NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will unveil the evolving universe in ways that have never been possible before.
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How NASA's Roman Space Telescope Will Rewind the Universe
How NASA's Roman Space Telescope Will Rewind the Universe
NASA's Hubble captured photos of asteroid Dimorphos when it was deliberately hit by a spacecraft called DART in September 2022.
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Hubble Captures Movie of DART Asteroid Impact Debris
Hubble Captures Movie of DART Asteroid Impact Debris
A massive galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus dominates the center of this Hubble image.
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Hubble Observes Cosmic Contortions
Hubble Observes Cosmic Contortions
A new study using Chandra X-ray Observatory has tracked two pairs of supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies.
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NASA's Chandra Discovers Giant Black Holes on Collision Course
NASA's Chandra Discovers Giant Black Holes on Collision Course
NASA will launch Israel’s first space telescope, the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT).
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NASA to Launch Israel's First Space Telescope
NASA to Launch Israel's First Space Telescope
A spectacular trio of merging galaxies in the constellation Boötes takes center stage in this Hubble image.
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Hubble Views a Merging Galactic Trio
Hubble Views a Merging Galactic Trio
Astronomers revealed a deep field image from NASA’s Webb featuring never-before-seen details in a region of space known as Pandora’s Cluster.
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NASA's Webb Uncovers New Details in Pandora's Cluster
NASA's Webb Uncovers New Details in Pandora's Cluster
Some of the hottest spots in the Sun’s atmosphere appear in the telescope’s X-ray view.
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NASA's NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun
NASA's NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun
New Hubble images of Saturn herald the start of the planet's "spoke season," when enigmatic features appear across its rings.
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Hubble Captures the Start of a New Spoke Season at Saturn
Hubble Captures the Start of a New Spoke Season at Saturn
An asteroid roughly the size of Rome’s Colosseum has been detected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
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Webb Detects Extremely Small Main Belt Asteroid
Webb Detects Extremely Small Main Belt Asteroid
Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center finished testing the high-gain antenna for the Roman Space Telescope.
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High-Gain Antenna for NASA's Roman Mission Clears Environmental Tests
High-Gain Antenna for NASA's Roman Mission Clears Environmental Tests
A snapshot of the Tarantula Nebula is featured in this image from Hubble.
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Hubble's New View of the Tarantula Nebula
Hubble's New View of the Tarantula Nebula
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble have for the first time directly measured the mass of a single, isolated white dwarf.
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For the First Time Hubble Directly Measures Mass of a Lone White Dwarf
For the First Time Hubble Directly Measures Mass of a Lone White Dwarf
The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this Hubble image.
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Hubble Views a Stellar Duo in Orion Nebula
Hubble Views a Stellar Duo in Orion Nebula
NASA’s Webb team will receive the 2023 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration, a top award from the Space Foundation.
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NASA's Webb Telescope Receives Top Space Foundation Award
NASA's Webb Telescope Receives Top Space Foundation Award
Astronomers used NASA’s Webb to obtain an inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud.
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Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry
Webb Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry
Objects scattered across this image from Hubble include galaxies near and far, Milky Way stars, and a solar system asteroid.
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Hubble Captures Cosmic Treasure Trove
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