Space Telescope Science Institute

Another piece of the Beta Pictoris puzzle has fallen into place—a newly discovered giant planet!

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a third exoplanet orbiting the nearby young star. This artist's concept shows the complete system, including the newly discovered Beta Pictoris d (right).

When a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole, it can be shredded in a process known as a tidal disruption event (seen here in an artist’s concept).

Finding globular star cluster Omega Centauri’s first known stellar-mass black hole required time and the united efforts of the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.

Models suggest that Omega Centauri, which is composed of 10 million gravitationally bound stars, should also contain about 10,000 stellar-mass black holes. However, observational evidence of their existence has remained scarce … until now.

One of astronomy’s big questions is: under what conditions can rocky planets outside our solar system even hold an atmosphere?

A program operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute is seeking to answer that question, and the team has reached a major milestone. They completed coordinated observations with the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes of their first target, Earth-sized rocky planet GJ 3929 b, and the red dwarf star it orbits, GJ 3929.

Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida raised the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from horizontal to vertical, signaling preparations are moving forward for upcoming inspections, functional testing, and integration work.

This fraction of the legendary Helix Nebula, observed by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2024, is now available as a printable poster!

The poster is available single- or double-sided. The double-sided version includes the image on the front and a description in both English and Spanish on the back.

Download this high-resolution poster: https://go.nasa.gov/4vJQ8Nz

Did you know the soon-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will map our universe? 🗺️

Through its High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, Roman will help astronomers study the universe’s large—and mostly hidden—structure by measuring distances to millions of galaxies. Over 520 days during the telescope’s five-year primary mission, Roman will observe 12% of the entire sky—equivalent to about 25,500 full moons. 🌕

This Roman survey will shed light on some of the perplexing aspects of the cosmos, including dark energy, dark matter, and the universe’s accelerating expansion. Roman will also uncover hundreds of millions of galaxies, providing insight about their evolution and the stellar populations within them.

There's more to this galaxy than what meets the eye.

In visible light, thick lanes of dust hide much of nearby galaxy Centaurus A, but the James Webb Space Telescope observes in infrared light, showing a totally new view.

The image, released to mark four successful years of science from the world’s most powerful space telescope, reveals glowing clouds of dust, a central supermassive black hole, hidden star-forming regions, different generations of stars, and the lasting marks of an ancient galactic collision.

What is dark matter? Astronomers have been trying to figure that out for nearly 100 years. It’s completely invisible, but scientists can see gravitational effect on other matter. In fact, it’s easier to be explained by explaining what it’s not.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide insights into this mystery.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: starburst galaxy M82.

A team of researchers recently completed an imaging survey of this edge-on spiral galaxy with the James Webb Space Telescope. Because of its infrared sensitivity, the telescope was able to see beyond the thick dust and resolve the central region of M82—revealing the galaxy’s distended disk structure and 16.5 million individual stars for the first time. Webb’s ability to resolve so many stars paves a way for astronomers to reconstruct M82’s star formation history, and more broadly, understand how the galaxy has evolved over time.

This Webb survey is the most recent addition to the overall data on M82. Multiple space observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have previously studied this intriguing environment. Each telescope offers a different view of M82: Hubble’s visible-light view shows the galaxy’s gas and dust structure, which conceals the features that are prominent in Webb’s infrared-light image.

This detection was once thought to be impossible! Light from this galaxy’s young, massive, closely clustered stars blasted through the opaque, neutral gas around it, transforming it and causing the gas to clear. The kicker? This happened when the universe was only 1.4 billion years old, as a transformative period known as the Era of Reionization was ending.

This suggests that similar galaxies in the early universe were responsible for clearing the neutral fog of hydrogen gas that once filled the cosmos.

Researchers have long sought evidence to explain how the universe transitioned from foggy to transparent—and the Hubble Space Telescope has provided the first example this close to the Era of Reionization of how that might have happened within an individual galaxy.

New chemistry clues from the James Webb Space Telescope are helping astronomers trace the origin of comet 3I/ATLAS. It is only the third interstellar comet ever discovered—all other comets are part of our own solar system.

Terzan 5, a newly reclassified star cluster, lies within the crowded central region of our Milky Way galaxy.

The scene starts with a ground-based image of our Milky Way and zooms in on and circles Terzan 5, ending with the composite image of the star system from the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes.

One of the most extreme known exoplanets could be more harsh than previously thought, according to researchers sharing the James Webb Space Telescope’s latest observations of HD 80606 b today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California.

The planet is seen here in an artist’s concept.

Webb’s powerful instruments show that HD 80606 b’s temperature swings are even more extreme than detected by its predecessor, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Both saw that the planet’s exaggerated elliptical orbit resulted in huge temperature swings.

Initial analysis of Webb's results show that the planet's temperature can jump by 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius) as it speeds by its Sun-like star. 

Turns out that the ancient star system Terzan 5 is not a globular star cluster, a classification that typically has only one ancient star population. New data not only confirms the existence of two distinct populations of stars in Terzan 5, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation.

As a result, researchers have reclassified Terzan 5 as a bulge fossil fragment or BFF. These findings were made possible by data from two of our most powerful observatories—the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes.

Although this system is located within the crowded bulge of our Milky Way galaxy and began forming its first stars 12 billion years ago, Terzan 5 was massive enough to maintain its separate identity—while other, lighter-weight star systems spread out and mixed to form the bulge, or core of our galaxy, billions of years ago. Terzan 5 is like a lump in an otherwise well-mixed cake batter.

Terzan 5’s first generation of stars formed roughly 12 billion years ago—as the Milky Way itself was assembling—and another about 4.7 billion years ago, just before the Earth started forming. The third generation formed 3.8 billion years ago and the fourth only 2.5 billion years ago.