James Webb Space Telescope
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NASA
Astronomy Picture of the Day
A Treasure Chest in the Carina Nebula Explanation: This treasure chest is full of stars. The featured image was obtained with NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope and shows a dust pillar in the Carina Nebula inside our Galaxy, roughly 7500 light-years away. It is formed by interstellar gas and dust, and shaped by powerful stellar winds and radiation from neighboring…
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NASA
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Webb’s View of M64 Explanation: Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it…
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NASA
NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation
This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects…
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NASA
NASA’s Chandra Spots Galactic Gem
Two galaxies merge at a furious rate in this Aug. 25, 2026, image of the II Zw 096 system. This and several other images of both visually and scientifically interesting galaxies were released by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. Chandra X-ray data (magenta) pinpoint powerful black hole activity and hot gas, while optical data (blue and white) from…
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NASA
Dust and Water in Sagittarius A*
A brilliant concentration of stars takes center stage in this Aug. 11, 2026, image taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb observed IRS 3, a star near the end of its life cycle, located within this starfield. Webb’s mid-infrared data revealed the clear signature of oxygen-rich silicate dust, as well as, for the first time, water, in its surrounding…
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NASA
NASA’s Hubble, Webb Find Far-out Solar System Objects ‘Remember’ Past
For the first time, scientists used the joint power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Some of these are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than they expected, and that the colors of these bodies followed the same relationships…
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NASA
Astronomy Picture of the Day
JWST Images The Lion’s Head Nebula Explanation: Are we looking at the future of our Sun? The James Webb Space Telescope captured today’s composite image of the Lion’s Head Nebula (NGC 2392) with its NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The Lion’s Head Nebula is the remnant of a Sun-like star. This star was unable to sustain the nuclear fusion in its core needed to remain stable. It began to shed layers of gas and…
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NASA
Webb Opens Treasure Chest
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this Aug. 6, 2026, infrared image of part of the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region also home to the Cosmic Cliffs. This feature, called the “Treasure Chest,” is an object known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail. Image credit: ESA/Webb,…
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NASA
Colorful Collage of Tarantula Nebula
Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope combine to reveal a vibrant view of 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, in this Aug. 11, 2026, image. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years from Earth, the Tarantula has thousands of young…
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NASA
Lion Nebula Roars in Webb’s Sights
Observing across the starry “plains” of space, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken new images of NGC 2392, nicknamed the Lion Nebula. The nebula’s “mane” is clear and detailed in this image released on Aug. 10, 2026, due to Webb’s high-resolution imaging. See more images of the Lion Nebula from Webb. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa…
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