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An illustration showing the side of a blue spiral galaxy.
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A horizontal oval is outlined by diffused, dark blue surrounding a brighter blue which fades to be lighter and brighter as it moves inward. The center of the shape is a hazy white circle. Cutting across the center of the image is a flattened disc outlined in dark blue with a light blue center. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Spiral Galaxy (Side View, Blue)
NASA's Swift imaged rings of X-ray light centered on V404 Cygni, a binary system containing an erupting black hole.
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This animated GIF shows rings of X-rays, shown in red, that expand away from a central white dot, like a bullseye target.
X-ray Echoes Create Black Hole Bull's-eye
This composite image of the nebula RCW 120 was captured by NASA's Spitzer and SOFIA missions.
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A faint ring of gray clouds breaks at the top, looking like horns extending upward. Inside the left side and lower part of the gray ring is a thick blue cloud. A ribbon of red overlaps part of the blue cloud on the left side, but also extends just outside the gray clouds. All of this is on a black background dotted with star light.
RCW 120
An illustration of NASA's TESS spacecraft.
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This illustration of NASA's TESS shows the spacecraft in shades of blue. The multi-sided, cylindrical shaped main body of the satellite has two solar array "wings," each extending out from the sides of the satellite which is attached to an open, cone shaped bottom piece. Nestled inside the cone are four squares which show the relative positions of TESS’s cameras.
TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)
An illustration of a planetary nebula.
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In the background is a hazy blue circle, with dark, transparent blue around the edge and lighter/brighter blues leading inward. In front of the blue circle is a blueish-gray object, shaped like a minimal, twisty lemon. Inside of this shape is a central, light yellow, cloudy circle with a bright white spot in the middle. All within the lemon-shaped object, the white spot is surrounded by an oblong oval shape which is overlapped by two large circular shapes and two small circular shapes. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Planetary Nebula (Version One, Blue)
This image shows the entire gamma-ray sky using 12 years of data from NASA's Fermi.
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This image shows the sky as you would see it in gamma-ray light. It is an oval, which represents the sky folded out onto a flat surface. The oval is primarily blue, showing a background of gamma-rays that permeates the entire sky. A bright band in shades of yellow, orange, and red goes across the center of the image from left to right, which shows gamma rays from the plane of the Milky Way. There are dots of yellow and red throughout the rest of the image, indicating distant galaxies that emit gamma rays.
Fermi's 12-year View of the Gamma-ray Sky
A NASA Chandra panorama provides an X-ray view above and below the center of the Milky Way.
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This vertical panoramic image depicts an area about the center of the Milky Way, with the field of view extending 1000 light years above and below the galaxy. The image resembles colorful gas clouds streaked with fine threads, dotted with a handful of brilliant white shapes. Throughout the image are tiny orange and purple dots set against a black backdrop. Across the center of the image is a horizontal, bright purple cloud with a glowing white core. This is the plane of the Milky Way, the disk where most of the Galaxy's stars reside. Below the plane of the Milky Way, near our lower left, is a bright, brick orange cloud. Above the plane, to our upper right, is a thin lilac cloud with some orange mist on the left. The orange cloud and mist are large plumes of hot gas. The colors represent different X-ray energies observed by Chandra. Even brighter than the glowing white core in the Milky Way are the brilliant white shapes that appear throughout the image. Two can be found to the right of the core, and two below the galaxy's plane. These are X-rays reflected from dust around bright X-ray sources.
Galactic Center Panorama in X-ray and Radio
An illustration of the ASCA spacecraft, developed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan.
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A graphic of ASCA is shown in light and dark shades of blue. The body of the spacecraft is bottle shaped, and an array of solar panels crosses on top of the widest part.
ASCA (Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics)
An illustration of a yellow  elliptical galaxy.
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A diffuse oval is outlined by light yellow but gets progressively more opaque moving towards the center, a bright white spot surrounded by a small ring of white haze. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Elliptical Galaxy (Yellow)
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
An illustration of a long gamma-ray burst caused by a collapsing star.
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At the center of a series of nested blue circles is a black dot representing a black hole. A pair of cone-shaped, white jets emerge from either side of the black hole, tilted 45 degrees from vertical. The outermost blue circle has layered scalloped edges.
Long Gamma-Ray Burst From a Collapsing Star
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
A horizontal oval illustration of a supernova.
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A large horizontal oval shape with stripes of lighter and darker green moves inward to a lighter green oval with waved edges. In the center is a dark green oval that appears like a starburst because of the waved outlines that lay on top. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Supernova (Light Green)
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'
An illustration of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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This illustration shows NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in shades of blue. Its base is made up of multiple different layers in an elongated shape. On top of the base sits the observatory's primary mirror which is a large hexagonal shape made up of smaller hexagons. Two rods at the base and one at the top protrude forward and all connect to a small disc, shaped object.
James Webb Space Telescope
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)
Hubble Space Telescope’s crisp view of Saturn shows multiple banded cloud activity warmed increasingly by direct sunlight.
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The ringed planet Saturn is seen on a stark black background. The round planet has bands of pale yellow, tan, and brown that appear as stripes across its surface, with the brightest and broadest band around the center of the planet and varying sizes of bands moving up to the top. Encircling the planet is a system of rings which are seen in front of the planet with part of the rings hidden behind the back. The rings also have bands of color ranging from pale blue to white and dusty tan with a few black areas showing gaps between the rings.
Hubble Sees Summertime on Saturn
An illustration showing the side of an irregular galaxy.
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A very long, diffuse, vaguely oval-shaped blob has a hazy dark purple color around its edge and it gets progressively lighter moving inward toward a cloudy white center. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Irregular Galaxy (Side View)
An illustration of NASA's NICER X-ray observatory.
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This illustration shows NASA's NICER observatory in shades of blue. A smaller, flat and square lower half connects to a top half that is cube-shaped with a series of small, circular pieces across its face.
NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer)
This photo shows 18 of Roman's detectors mounted in an engineering test unit of the mission's focal plane array. 
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At the center of the photo is a set of 18 square detectors on a gold platform. They're arranged in six columns of three detectors 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. The detectors are different shades of blue from royal blue to teal.
NASA Roman's Heat-Vision ‘Eyes'
A real monster black hole is revealed in this image from NASA's NuSTAR and Hubble.
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Three panels show the same region of sky in different wavelengths of light. On the left is a high-energy X-ray image, which has a bright white spot at the center with a halo of reds and yellows. The halo is brightest on the left side of the white central spot. On the right is the optical light image, which shows two cloudy ovals in shards of white, pale blue and red coming together. Where they meet the image is very bright. Also in the image are a few background spots of light on the black background. In the central image, the X-ray and optical images are shown together, so we see the bright spot where the galaxies come together surrounded by the red X-ray haze.
Tale of Two Black Holes
An illustration of JAXA's Suzaku spacecraft.
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This illustration shows the Suzaku spacecraft in shades of blue. The long body of the spacecraft is narrower at the top than at the bottom, which has a hollow area underneath. Solar panels extend to either side of the widest part of the body. Round circles representing the telescopes extend from the top of the narrowest part of the body.
Suzaku
A circular illustration of a supernova.
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A large circular shape with rounded waves around the edge, this graphic gives the appearance of a flower. Smaller transparent circles with the same wavy edge are layered inward to create an inner starburst shape. While the outer rings are a muddy, light red color, the inner starburst shape is a darker color with green around its edge and dark blue in the center. White dots representing stars speckle the image.
Supernova (Red)
An illustration of NASA's SPHEREx spacecraft.
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This illustration of NASA's SPHEREx mission shows the spacecraft in shades of blue. The main body of the spacecraft is cone shaped with smaller cone shapes within it, with a solar array "wing" stemming from the side of the craft.
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer)
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)

Explore the Universe

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NGC 3156 is a lenticular galaxy, with two visible threads of dark reddish-brown dust crossing the galaxy’s disk.
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The swirls of the galaxy IC 1776 stand in splendid isolation in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
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Hubble Images a Swirling Supernova Site
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When a star strays too close to a black hole, gravitational forces create tides that break the star apart into a stream of gas.
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This colorful image is an example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects.
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The Aero Club of Southern California has awarded the Howard Hughes Memorial Award to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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NASA's Webb Wins Howard Hughes Memorial Award
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This huge ball of stars – around 100 billion in total – is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away.
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Hubble Views a Sphere of Stars
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This galaxy in the constellation Eridanus is a ghostly assemblage of stars which resembles a sparkling cloud.
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This distant galaxy cluster is a cosmic leviathan that is highly luminous at X-ray wavelengths.
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Hubble Captures Cosmic Cluster
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continued observations of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe.
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The glittering, glitzy contents of the globular cluster NGC 6652 sparkle in this star-studded image.
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Hubble Glimpses a Glitzy Galactic Cluster
Hubble Glimpses a Glitzy Galactic Cluster
While our telescopes can’t directly see dark matter, they can help us figure out more about it thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
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How Gravity Warps Light
How Gravity Warps Light
Astronomers discovered an arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang.
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NASA's Webb Identifies the Earliest Strands of the Cosmic Web
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The lenticular galaxy NGC 5283 is the subject of a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
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