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  1. Aging White Dwarf Still Consuming Its Planetary System

    October 22, 2025Release ID: 2025-404 Missions: STScI

    Dead star seen ripping planet apart.

    At image center is a small, white star against a gray background. It is surrounded by a large translucent disk with rings and gaps that extends from upper left to lower right. In the foreground, irregular chunky rocks are floating in space along the bottom of the frame. A stream of material extends from lower right toward the central star. The words, artist's concept are at lower left.

  2. NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object

    September 18, 2025Release ID: 2025-024 Missions: Hubble

    Only Hubble with its unique ultraviolet vision could see this event

    An illustration showing a glowing white object in the upper left corner. This object is encircled by hundreds of thin, concentric, pale-yellow rings on an angle from bottom left to top right. The rings are palest closest to the central, glowing white object. A curving trail of gray, rock-like fragments marches across the right side, through the thin rings and joins the rings at far right. The eight largest fragments of varying sizes appear in the foreground. These objects have white, comet-like tails streaking away from the glowing white object in the rings’ center. The curving trail of fragments bends toward the glowing white object. At the bottom left corner is the label Artist’s Concept.

  3. NASA's Hubble Uncovers Rare White Dwarf Merger Remnant

    August 13, 2025Release ID: 2025-020 Missions: Hubble

    Forensic evidence comes from dwarf’s unusual spectrum

    An illustration of a white dwarf star merging with a red giant star. The red giant is an arch across the bottom of the illustration, with a textured surface. The white dwarf is a white pinpoint object at upper center right. The white dwarf in embedded inside a teardrop-shaped cocoon of white gas. It is enveloped in a white open ellipsoid that is the bow shock from speeding through the red giant’s outer atmosphere. The words “artist’s concept” are at lower left.

  4. NASA's Webb Traces Details of Complex Planetary Nebula

    July 30, 2025Release ID: 2025-124 Missions: Webb

    More than one star contributes to the irregular shape of NGC 6072.

    Colorful, mostly red glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape that is illuminated from within by a bright central star. The asymmetrical shape resembles a large squished bug on the ground. In the center, a light blue glow appears over areas of dark pockets that look dark blue and are traced with orange material. It has a clumpy appearance. Shells of gas and dust appear as lobes stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. The shells become a deeper red with distance from the center. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock. The background of space is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.

  5. For the First Time Hubble Directly Measures Mass of a Lone White Dwarf

    February 02, 2023Release ID: 2023-004 Missions: Hubble

    Astronomers Use a Trick of Nature to 'Weigh' a Dead Star

    Diagram titled “Hubble measures deflection of starlight by a foreground object.” Diagram includes an illustration of the Hubble Space Telescope observing a distant star whose light curves around another object—a white dwarf star—in the foreground. The diagram shows the real position of the observed star, the light path of that star, and the apparent (“observed”) position of the star. The white dwarf is in the center of the diagram, on a grid that appears to be warped downward under the enormous mass of the white dwarf. Hubble is toward the lower right on the diagram, at the 5 o’clock position relative to the white dwarf. It is pointing up toward the 12 o’clock position, where the star appears to be (“observed star position”). A straight dashed line connects the observed star position with the telescope. The real star position is at 11 o’clock. A solid line curves from the real star position, around the white dwarf, to the telescope.

  6. NASA’s Webb Indicates Several Stars ‘Stirred Up’ Southern Ring Nebula

    December 08, 2022Release ID: 2022-059 Missions: Webb

    Researchers reconstructed the scene, finding up to three unseen stellar companions that may have shaped the planetary nebula’s layers of gas and dust.

    A tight cropping of the Southern Ring Nebula shows the planetary nebula as a misshapen oval. Two stars are almost overlapping at the center, and an almost solid white oval surrounding them. The top star is blue. The bottom star is red.

  7. NASA Webb's First Full Color Images, Data Are Set to Sound

    August 31, 2022Release ID: 2022-040 Missions: Webb

    New Tracks Combine Science and Art, Improving Experiences for Blind and Low-Vision Communities

    Illustration representing Webb science set to sound. At bottom left is a large electric guitar amplifier at a slight angle. Music notes emanate from the front of the speaker and drift across the frame. In the middle, superimposed on the starry background is a large hexagon representing various aspects of Webb Science: stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, and black holes.

  8. NASA’s Webb Captures Dying Star’s Final ‘Performance’ in Fine Detail

    July 12, 2022Release ID: 2022-033 Missions: Webb

    The second star in the Southern Ring Nebula comes into full view, along with exceptional structures

    Colorful side-by-side images show the near-infrared (left) and mid-infrared (right) light of a planetary nebula with shells of glowing cloud-like material illuminated by central stars.

  9. Dead Star Caught Ripping Up Planetary System

    June 15, 2022Release ID: 2022-026 Missions: Hubble

    Both Rocky and Icy Bodies Were Identified Among the Debris on the Surface of a White Dwarf Star

    Illustration of a close-up view of the white dwarf system. A tiny star lies at the center, surrounded by a faint disk of material. Rocky-metallic bodies are shown falling into the star.

  10. Hubble Discovers Hydrogen-Burning White Dwarfs Enjoying Slow Aging

    September 06, 2021Release ID: 2021-050 Missions: Hubble

    Stellar Dead-Enders Get A New Lease On Life

    Side by side of two clusters with densely packed blue, red and white stars.

  11. NASA's Kepler Witnesses Vampire Star System Undergoing Super-Outburst

    January 24, 2020Release ID: 2020-07 Missions: STScI

    Archival data reveals earliest stages of a dramatic event

    Dwarf Nova System

  12. Hubble Astronomers Develop a New Use for a Century-Old Relativity Experiment to Measure a White Dwarf's Mass

    June 07, 2017Release ID: 2017-25 Missions: Hubble

    White dwarf shows how gravity can bend starlight

    Hubble Astronomers Develop a New Use for a Century-Old Relativity Experiment to Measure a White Dwarf's Mass

  13. Search For Stellar Survivor of a Supernova Explosion

    March 30, 2017Release ID: 2017-16 Missions: Hubble

    Star might answer question of how white dwarfs explode

    Search For Stellar Survivor of a Supernova Explosion

  14. Hubble Witnesses Massive Comet-Like Object Pollute Atmosphere of a White Dwarf

    February 09, 2017Release ID: 2017-09 Missions: Hubble

    Astronomers have found the best evidence yet of the remains of a comet-like object scattered around a burned-out star. They used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to detect the debris, which has polluted the atmosphere...

    Hubble Witnesses Massive Comet-Like Object Pollute Atmosphere of a White Dwarf

  15. Hubble Uncovers Fading Cinders of Some of Our Galaxy's Earliest Homesteaders

    November 05, 2015Release ID: 2015-38 Missions: Hubble

    About 13 billion years ago, long before our sun formed, the construction of our Milky Way galaxy was just beginning. Young, mostly sun-like stars in the core, or central bulge, provided the building blocks for the galaxy...

    Hubble Uncovers Fading Cinders of Some of Our Galaxy's Earliest Homesteaders

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