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  1. Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells 'Spiraling' Apep, Limits Long Orbit

    November 19, 2025Release ID: 2025-132 Missions: Webb

    Researchers used Webb to refine the orbit of two Wolf-Rayet stars, named for the Egyptian god of chaos, to a lengthy 190 years and confirmed a third star carves their ongoing carbon dust ejections.

    Four dust shells in Wolf-Rayet Apep expand away from three central stars that appear as a single pinpoint of light. The shells are curved, and the interior shell looks like a backward lowercase e shape.

  2. NASA's Webb Scratches Beyond Surface of Cat's Paw for 3rd Anniversary

    July 10, 2025Release ID: 2025-129 Missions: Webb

    What lies within a toe bean? According to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, mini toe beans composed of gas, dust, and stars.

    A section of the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a local star-forming region composed of gas, dust, and young stars. Four roughly circular areas are toward the center of the frame: a small oval toward the top left, a large circle in the top center, and two ovals at bottom left and right. Each circular area has a luminous blue glow, with the top center and bottom left areas the brightest. Brown-orange filaments of dust, which vary in density, surround these four bluish patches and stretch toward the frame’s edges. Small zones, such as to the left and right of the top-center blue circular area, appear darker and seemingly vacant of stars. Toward the center are small, fiery red clumps scattered among the brown dust. Many small, yellow-white stars are spread across the scene, some with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of Webb. A few larger blue-white stars with diffraction spikes are scattered throughout, mostly toward the top left and bottom right. In the top right corner is a bright red-orange oval.

  3. New Visualization From NASA's Webb Telescope Explores Cosmic Cliffs

    May 07, 2025Release ID: 2025-123 Missions: Webb

    Iconic Webb image transforms into a 3D landscape of gas, dust, and stars.

    The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line forming peaks and valleys in the top third. At the bottom is a brown cloudscape forming a nebula. At the top is a comparatively clear upper portion in blue. Speckled across both portions are innumerable stars of many sizes.

  4. Eye on Infinity: NASA Celebrates Hubble's 35th Year in Orbit

    April 23, 2025Release ID: 2025-013 Missions: Hubble

    Legendary space telescope redefined the universe.

    Composite shows four Hubble images in quarters. At top left is a crisp view of Mars in shades of orange, blues, and browns. At top right is planetary nebula NGC 2899, which is shaped like a single macaroni noodle, with its central torus appearing semi-transparent and blue and green, and its top and bottom edges in orange. At bottom left is a tiny portion of the Rosette Nebula. Very dark gray material shaped like a triangle takes up the center. At bottom right is barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 with a milky yellow center that forms a bar surrounded by multiple blue star-filled spiral arms that wrap up counterclockwise.

  5. With NASA's Webb, Dying Star's Energetic Display Comes Into Full Focus

    April 14, 2025Release ID: 2025-118 Missions: Webb

    Only the James Webb Space Telescope has the ability to fully detail this planetary nebula’s dusty rings with its unique mid-infrared camera.

    What looks like a single large, bright blue star (but is two) is centered, surrounded by the shape of a short cylinder at an angle in a mix of orange and blue.

  6. NASA Webb Wows With Incredible Detail in Actively Forming Star System

    March 07, 2025Release ID: 2025-111 Missions: Webb

    This near-infrared image shows the history of ejections from the two actively forming stars in Lynds 483.

    At the center is a thin vertical cloud known as Lynds 483 (L483) that is roughly shaped like an hourglass with irregular edges. The lower lobe is slightly cut off. The top lobe is seen in full, petering out at the top.

  7. NASA's Webb Reveals Intricate Layers of Interstellar Dust, Gas

    January 14, 2025Release ID: 2025-102 Missions: Webb

    A supernova flashbulb illuminated otherwise unseen material between the stars.

    Three rows show Webb images of the same region taken on three different dates. The top row is labeled August 19, 2024. The middle row is labeled September 16, 2024. The bottom row is labeled September 30, 2024. Each row shows two images split by a vertical black bar where there is no data. Each image is speckled with dozens of white stars, some showing Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes, against the black background of space. The images also show tightly packed, glowing red filaments that resemble muscle fibers or wood grain. While the background stars are the same in every row, the filaments change noticeably. In the top row, the filaments extend horizontally from upper left to lower right. In the middle and bottom rows, the filaments extend from lower left to upper right, and seem to shift slightly downward in position, with the last the lowest.

  8. Webb Watches Carbon-Rich Dust Shells Form, Expand in Star System

    January 13, 2025Release ID: 2025-103 Missions: Webb

    The telescope shows that the winds of two massive stars are producing carbon-rich dust, which may eventually “seed” new stars and planets.

    A three-part graphic showing observations of Wolf-Rayet 140, two massive stars with 17 dust shells around them. An inset appears at right, showing a portion of the two observations matched up to show that the arced dust has moved.

  9. NASA's Hubble Sees a Stellar Volcano

    October 16, 2024Release ID: 2024-021 Missions: Hubble

    Oddball Stellar Duo Creates Spectacular Fireworks

    A bright binary star surrounded by a colorful nebula on the black background of space. The star in the center is a large white spot surrounded by a circular glow. It has a large, X-shaped set of diffraction spikes around it. The nebula extends far above, below, left and right of the star in long, arcing shapes made of thin, multicolored filaments — mostly red and greenish colors, but lit in a bright cyan near the star where its light illuminates the gas.

  10. Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualization from NASA's Hubble and Webb Telescopes

    June 26, 2024Release ID: 2024-020 Missions: Hubble, Webb

    The new visualization enables viewers to explore fundamental questions in science, experience how science is done, and discover the universe for themselves.

    Mosaic of the Pillars of Creation visualization model, composed of 4 alternating strips of Hubble and Webb versions oriented 45 degrees clockwise from vertical.

  11. First-of-Its-Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image

    June 20, 2024Release ID: 2024-115 Missions: Webb

    Alignment of bipolar jets confirms star formation theories

    A rectangular image with black vertical rectangles at the bottle left and top right to indicate missing data. A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The center of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the center, there is one particularly bright star, that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the center. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field, brightest sources in the field have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of the Webb Telescope.

  12. Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA's Webb

    June 17, 2024Release ID: 2024-120 Missions: Webb

    New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion.

    The Crab Nebula. A multicolored oval with complex structure extends from lower left to upper right against a black background.

  13. Webb Captures Top of Iconic Horsehead Nebula in Unprecedented Detail

    April 29, 2024Release ID: 2024-119 Missions: Webb

    Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the nebula’s distinctive structure.

    A clumpy dome of blueish-gray clouds rises about a third of the way from the bottom. Above it, streaky, translucent red wisps brush upward to about halfway up the image. The top half of the image is the black background of space with one prominent, bright white star with Webb’s 8-point diffraction spikes. Additional stars and galaxies are scattered throughout the image, although very few are seen through the thick clouds at bottom and all are significantly smaller than the largest star.

  14. Hubble Celebrates 34th Anniversary with a Look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula

    April 23, 2024Release ID: 2024-013 Missions: Hubble

    Glowing Bipolar Bubble from Dying Star Expands into Space

    Taking up most of the image, is a multi-colored nebula appearing as two translucent orbs attached by a white band.

  15. Peering Into the Tendrils of NGC 604 with NASA's Webb

    March 09, 2024Release ID: 2024-110 Missions: Webb

    Unique opportunity to study high concentration of massive, young stars nearby

    At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is an opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula, including two tiny cavities at the top center of the image. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside the nebula, most of them are yellow or white. At 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with 8 diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disk-shaped galaxies scattered across the image.

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