From Nebulae Shaped Like a Cranium to Giant Stellar Bubbles: The Universe as You’ve Never Seen It

From frozen landscapes on Mars to distant galaxies glowing across unimaginable distances, modern astronomy continues to reveal a universe far more vast and mysterious than we once imagined. Through the lenses of powerful space telescopes and planetary missions, scientists and photographers have captured images that not only advance our understanding of space, but also invite […]
Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy that’s hard to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (the Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star […]
A Galactic Embrace

Mid-infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (in white, gray, and red) and X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue) come together in this photo of colliding spiral galaxies released on Dec. 1, 2025. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago; billions of years in the future, they will merge […]
Red Spider Planetary Nebula from Webb

Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula form when ordinary stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives. After ballooning into cool red giants, these stars shed their outer layers and cast them into space, exposing their white-hot cores. Ultraviolet light from the central star ionises the cast-off material, causing it to glow. […]
Webb Reveals Details Never Before Seen in Cassiopeia A

The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth’s perspective. […]
Image the galaxy LEDA 48062 in the constellation Perseus

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the galaxy LEDA 48062 in the constellation Perseus. LEDA 48062 is the faint, sparse, amorphous galaxy on the right side of the image, and it is accompanied by a more sharply defined neighbor on the left – the large, disk-like lenticular galaxy UGC 8603. A smattering […]
Massive Structures Threaten the History of the Universe

Everything we know about the Universe is about to change due to a recent discovery of a massive cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Bootes the Herdsman. British Ph.D. student, Alexia Lopez, was analyzing the light from distant quasars when she discovered the Giant Arc, a cluster of galaxies covering 1/15th of the observable […]
Spectacular Merger of Three Galaxies Observed

A spectacular trio of merging galaxies in the constellation Boötes takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These three galaxies are set on a collision course and will eventually merge into a single larger galaxy, distorting one another’s spiral structure through mutual gravitational interaction in the process. An unrelated foreground galaxy […]