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This Hubble image of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune reveals a huge dark storm (top center) and the emergence of a smaller dark spot nearby (top right). The giant vortex, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was traveling south toward certain doom by atmospheric forces at the equator when it suddenly made a U-turn and began drifting back northward. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) captured this visible-light image on January 7, 2020, the same time a slightly smaller dark spot mysteriously appeared nearby. That spot then vanished a few months later. The smaller feature may have been a piece of the giant storm that broke off as the larger vortex approached the equator. The large storm is the fourth transient dark spot Hubble has observed since 1993. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft first imaged two dark features in Neptune’s southern hemisphere in 1989 as Voyager flew by the distant planet. Those storms had disappeared by the time Hubble looked at Neptune in 1994. However, Hubble detected two new dark spots in the planet’s northern hemisphere in 1994 and 1996. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / L.A. Sromovsky & P.M. Fry, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hubble Monitors Weird Dark Vortex on Neptune

Dec 16, 2020 by News Staff

In 2018, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spotted a giant dark storm, which is 7,400 km (4,600 miles) across, in the northern hemisphere...

HD 33632Ab detections in 2020 (top panels) and 2018 (bottom panels). Image credit: Currie et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/abc631.

Astronomers Directly Image Brown Dwarf around Nearby Sun-Like Star

Dec 16, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the Subaru Telescope and the Keck II telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory, astronomers have discovered and directly imaged a brown dwarf orbiting...

GN-z11. Image credit: NASA / ESA / P. Oesch, Yale University / G. Brammer, STScI / P. van Dokkum, Yale University / G. Illingworth, University of California, Santa Cruz.

GN-z11 Confirmed as Farthest Galaxy Ever Observed

Dec 15, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

GN-z11, a young but moderately massive galaxy located in the constellation of Ursa Major, is estimated to date from when the Universe was only 420 million...

This Hubble images shows Caldwell 45, a spiral galaxy located 59 million light-years away in the constellation Boötes. Also known as NGC 5248, this galaxy is notable for the ring structure around its nucleus. These nuclear rings are characterized by hot spots of starburst activity. Caldwell 45 was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1784. The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 10 and can be spotted using a small telescope, though it won’t appear very bright. A larger telescope is needed to make out the galaxy’s spiral arms. The best time of year to observe Caldwell 45 is during the northern hemisphere’s spring and the southern hemisphere’s autumn. This stunning image of Caldwell 45 is a composite of observations made by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light. It captures the glowing red clouds where new stars are forming, scattered along the galaxy’s winding arms. These observations of Caldwell 45 were made to help astronomers learn more about gas in the galaxy’s starburst regions, as well as to better understand the structure of its nuclear rings. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Lee, California Institute of Technology / A. Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley / Gladys Kober, Catholic University of America.

NASA Releases Stunning Images of 30 Caldwell Objects

Dec 15, 2020 by News Staff

NASA has released more than 50 new Hubble images featuring 30 galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. All of these objects belong to a collection known to...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth planet TOI-237b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TESS Discovers Two Small and Warm Exoplanets

Dec 14, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have discovered two exoplanets transiting inactive red dwarf stars TOI-122...

This Hubble image shows GAL-CLUS-022058-38303, the largest, nearly-complete Einstein ring known. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Saurabh Jha, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey / L. Shatz.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Enormous Einstein Ring

Dec 14, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking photo of GAL-CLUS-022058-38303, the largest and one of the most complete...

HD 106906b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed Planet Nine. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Young Super-Jupiter Circles Its Binary Star Once Every 15,000 Years

Dec 10, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers are still searching for a hypothetical Planet Nine in the distant reaches of the Solar System, but an 11-Jupiter-mass planet called HD 106906b...

An artist’s impression of a powerful flare from Proxima Centauri ejecting material onto a nearby planet. Image credit: Mark Myers / OzGrav.

Stellar Flare-Associated Radio Burst Detected from Proxima Centauri

Dec 10, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected a bright, long-duration optical flare accompanied by intense radio bursts from Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s nearest stellar...

A whimsical view of the planets of our Solar System and the missions sent from Earth to explore them. Image credit: Jenny Mottar / NASA.

Astronomers Discover New ‘Celestial Autobahn’ in Solar System

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers from Serbia and the United States has discovered a new superhighway network to travel through our Solar System much...

An artist’s impression of what the Milky Way might look like seen from above. The colored rings show the rough extent of the Heracles galaxy. The yellow dot shows the position of the Sun. Image credit: Danny Horta-Darrington, Liverpool John Moores University / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SDSS.

Astronomers Find ‘Fossil Galaxy’ Hidden in Depths of Milky Way

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

A small satellite galaxy, named Heracles, collided with our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 billion years ago and its remnants account for about one third of...

Jupiter and Saturn have been traveling across the sky together all year, but in December, get ready for them to really put on a show. Over the first three weeks of the month, watch each evening as the two planets get closer in the sky than they’ve appeared in two decades. Look for them low in the southwest in the hour after sunset, Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Jupiter and Saturn Will Form ‘Double Planet’ for First Time since Middle Ages

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

On December 21, 2020, the Solar System’s two gas giants will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since 1226 CE. Jupiter...

The positions of 16 new supernova remnant candidates in the Large Magellanic Cloud are marked in yellow; previously classified X-ray supernova remnants -- MCSNR J0541-6659, MCSNR 0522-6740 and MCSNR J0542-7104 -- are marked in violet color. Image credit: Yew et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa3382.

Astronomers Spot Ancient Supernova Remnants in Large Magellanic Cloud

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have confirmed three supernova remnants and discovered 16 new supernova remnant candidates in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite...

This image of a sunspot was taken on January 28, 2020 by NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer. The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below. This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nm -- in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Image credit: NSO / AURA / NSF.

Inouye Solar Telescope Captures Its First Image of Sunspot

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

An image of a sunspot captured by NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope clearly shows the potential of the telescope and its set of state-of-the-art...

This Hubble image shows NGC 1792, a spiral galaxy 36.4 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Columba. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout NGC 1792 indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the center that the older, cooler stars reside. The color image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the ultraviolet, near-infrared, and optical parts of the spectrum. It is based on data obtained through five filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: Hubble / ESA / NASA / J. Lee / Leo Shatz.

Hubble Images Beautiful Star-Forming Spiral Galaxy: NGC 1792

Dec 7, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a spectacular image of the starburst spiral galaxy NGC 1792. This Hubble image shows NGC 1792, a spiral...

Part of the SMASH dataset showing an unprecedented wide-angle view of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / SMASH / D. Nidever, Montana State University / Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage / Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin.

Astronomers Capture Deepest Views Ever of Magellanic Clouds

Dec 4, 2020 by News Staff

New images, taken with the 520-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-m Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory,...

These images of the Stingray Nebula were captured by Hubble in 1996 (left) and 2016 (right). Image credit: NASA / ESA / B. Balick, University of Washington / M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía / G. Ramos-Larios, Universidad de Guadalajara.

Hubble Observes Rapidly Fading Stingray Nebula

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

A planetary nebula called the Stingray Nebula has faded precipitously over just the past 20 years, according to an analysis of the archival images from...

Data from more than 1.8 billion stars have been used to create this map of the entire sky. It shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite and released as part of Gaia’s Early Data Release 3. Brighter regions represent denser concentrations of bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer and fainter stars are observed. The color of the image is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is actually a flattened disk seen edge-on that contains most of the Galaxy’s stars. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears bright, and thronged with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of more distant stars. Many of these clouds conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are currently being born. Dotted across the image are also many globular and open clusters, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / A. Moitinho.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Data on More Than 1.8 Billion Stars

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium released today the most detailed ever catalogue of Milky Way stars. The new data set,...

ASKAP conducted its first survey of the entire southern sky in record speed and detail, creating a new atlas of the Universe. Image credit: CSIRO.

ASKAP Radio Telescope Maps Nearly Three Million Galaxies

Dec 2, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have mapped approximately 3,000,000 galaxies in the observable Universe. ASKAP...

An artist’s impression of the Proxima Centauri system. Image credit: Lorenzo Santinelli.

Super-Earth Proxima c Has Earth-Like Stellar Environment, Study Suggests

Dec 1, 2020 by Natali Anderson

In a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers investigated the effects the activity of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri...